Daylight
by queerfemme
Summary: What if Regina had surrendered herself to Greg to save Emma and Storybrooke? What if Emma doesn't care about the town, and rescues Regina, because that's what True Love does? A Swan Queen re-write of the end of Lacey and of Second Star on the Right. I promise a happy ending! Rated M for torture (episode-related), sexyfuntimes, some references to rape, and language.
1. Prologue

**The prologue takes place during season one, sometime shortly after True North. The rest of the fic will pick up in season two towards the end of Lacey and will re-write the heteronormative fiasco that was Second Star on the Right.**

**The song and the title are from Daylight by Maroon 5. Both song lyrics and text messages are italicized in the piece, but you'll be able to tell the difference.**

**Reviews spread love, and this is quite a labor of love, so... review if you can, please and thanks!**

* * *

_I never wanted to stop because I don't wanna start all over, start all over _  
_I was afraid of the dark but now it's all that I want_

Henry rarely had sleepovers, but he had begged Regina to be allowed to stay over one night with Ava and Nicholas, soon after they had reunited with their dad. She had a grudging respect for their father, of course, knowing Michael's loyalty to his children from a time he couldn't then remember, and besides, how could she say no to that face? So she'd let him go, and flinched as he smiled but didn't hug her goodnight. She waved him off the porch after giving Michael an entirely too-thorough rundown of his sleeping schedule and dietary needs. She pretended she wasn't heartbroken at how much happier he looked, integrated into some other family. Some other family that didn't include her.

Her phone vibrated as Michael pulled away from her house.

_I hear the kid has a sleepover tonight._

She smiled grimly, knowing a booty call when she saw one, even if it was in text message form.

She bitterly swallowed the desire for it to mean more than that to the bumbling blonde sheriff. They had been making love, having sex, fucking - _what did words matter?_ - on the down low, neither woman acknowledging their desperate and power-laden unions, since Emma had saved Henry from that damned mine. Always after Henry was sleeping; always when Henry was in school; always when Mary Margaret was out for the night and Regina could take Emma on her roommate/mother's kitchen floor and then leave her still half-undressed; always when no one would know, when it could stay in a secret place where neither of them had to acknowledge the thrill that ran through both of them upon seeing each other, the warmth and the strength they drew from each others' bodies, the deep feelings that came with their deep fuckings that neither woman had yet spoken of or hinted at.

And Regina certainly wasn't about to begin that conversation. Not even with herself.

_I see the Storybrooke rumor mill now includes its sheriff. Congratulations._

Affecting a devil-may-care attitude was a speciality of Regina's: _if the sheriff wanted something_, she reasoned, _she'd simply have to work for it_.

The response was almost immediate.

_Yeah yeah wtvr u say, Madam Mayor. Now can I come over or wut?_

"Nothing if not a spelling whiz and blunt," Regina murmured aloud to herself as she stepped back into her house, primping in the mirror, reapplying blood red lipstick she knew Emma loved, and unbuttoning an extra blouse button or two before typing out a response.

_I'm really rather busy, Sheriff. If you care to specify what you'd like, I'd be happy to oblige._

Her eyebrow shot up and heat tore through her body at Emma's almost immediate response.

_I think I know what ud like, Madam Mayor._

Regina smirked.

_If allowing you to come over will stop your endlessly cryptic and poorly composed responses, then by all means, come, Sheriff Swan._

Emma didn't miss the double entendre, and her bug was outside five minutes later.

Regina smiled as the doorbell rang, primping her hair one more time before answering. Emma's eyes were already dark with desire, and Regina was suddenly very grateful the sun had gone down, because it limited the chances that someone could see the way Emma kissed her immediately, pulling her inside and shutting the door behind them.

"I missed you," the blonde breathed into her skin, and Regina's heart leapt and shrank at the same time.

"I doubt you missed _me_ so much as _sex_, Sheriff, seeing as you have the drive of a fifteen year old," Regina quipped back, tearing the blonde's red jacket roughly off of her shoulders.

Emma stopped her tongue's frenzied tour of Regina's collarbone to rear back and look into Regina's eyes. "No, Regina. I missed_ you_," she corrected, with a sincerity that frightened them both. To cover it up, Emma kissed the brunette soundly as they both groaned with the release.

Bruising kisses and nails breaking open lines on each others' backs characterized the next few hours, along with screams of pleasure and teasing encouragements, earth-shattering orgasms and fingers and thighs and lips dripping with each others' juices.

Rarely did Regina drift off to sleep after they did... whatever the hell it was that they were doing... but that night, she did, secure in knowing that Henry was safe and sound out of the house, with no chance of being them discovered.

Emma knew by unspoken agreement that she wouldn't be welcomed in the morning: that if she were there when Regina awoke, the brunette might never allow this to happen again. She ran a gentle finger across the curve of Regina's flawless shoulders, wrapping her body around Regina's tenderly.

_Here I am staring at your perfection; __in my arms, so beautiful. _

She knew she would rather die than admit it, but she wished this weren't just fucking. She put on a good show that sex was all it was for her, and she knew Regina could be a flat-out cruel person, but she also knew that she truly loved their son and would do anything for him: even if that 'anything' was misguided, was holding on too tightly, sometimes. And holding on too tightly was something Emma definitely understood. She was doing it now, as she slid her arm across Regina's stomach and pulled her soft and firm body close tenderly.

_The sky is getting bright; the stars are burning out _  
_Somebody slow it down_

Regina sighed in her sleep and shifted still closer to the blonde, and Emma allowed herself to smile softly at how relaxed the older woman's face was when she slept. She didn't know that the only nights Regina wasn't plagued by nightmares were the nights she fell asleep in Emma's arms.

_This is way too hard, 'cause I know _  
_When the sun comes up, I will leave _  
_This is my last glance that will soon be memory_

Sometimes she hated this woman, and sometimes she... _no_. Putting things to words destroys them. And anyway, Regina would kill her - maybe even literally - if she heard the words that were threatening to form in Emma's mind. She didn't dare hope that they were forming in Regina's, as well.

_And when the daylight comes I'll have to go _  
_But tonight I'm gonna hold you so close_

Emma gloried in the warmth of Regina's beautiful body against hers for as long as she could. But they had given each other pleasure long into the night, and Emma could hear the morning birds beginning to wake each other with their songs. With immense reluctance - but resigning herself to the thought that this was the only way it could be, not knowing that Regina struggled with the same forbidden and unwelcome attachment - Emma kissed Regina's temple lightly, gently disentangling their bodies as she pulled the covers over her enemy-lover, dressed silently and almost mournfully, and slipped away into the dawn.

_'Cause in the daylight we'll be on our own _  
_But tonight I need to hold you so close_


	2. Chapter 1

**This is post-bench (because she told Regina to "relax" about Neal - come on, CANON! ;) ), but before Regina talks to Henry (then erases his memory) about her plan to destroy the town.**

**Regina has a little flashback to an earlier point in the day in this chapter, which I've bracketed in italics for comprehension's sake. **

* * *

The former but not-yet-fallen Queen waved away the impossibly ridiculous boundary between the outside world and the bean field, reflecting on how absolutely thoughtless it had been to assume that just because people couldn't see something, they couldn't stumble upon it. As she and Emma had stumbled into taking their supposed hatred out in impassioned, never-spoken-of-but-frequently-had-and-thought-of sex.

Or be forced into it. As she had been with Leopold. As Emma had been with the Enchanted Forest. As both of them had been with their entire lives.

She shook her head as she flexed her fingers sensually, delicately.

"Not your best work," she murmured of the Blue Fairy as she felt the distasteful tang of overzealously sweet cotton candy and overripe grapefruit that flavored all of Blue's magic.

She stared out at the bean field with victorious anger - she'd told Emma she would find what she was hiding, and she had - and strode forward in her stilettos to collect a few healthy cuttings, losing herself for a few moments in the glories of working with the earth with her hands. She reveled in the power held deep within their semi-translucent cotyledons and pocketed the cuttings gracefully.

She stroked the nearby leaves almost mournfully, as though already regretting what she was about to do. Nothing else - _nothing_, she told herself firmly, forcing away memories of the blonde's naked body laying next to hers, before Cora, before Emma had been manipulated into losing faith in Regina - made her feel this way, this calm, this at peace. Except Henry. And his other mother?_ No._

And yet Snow and her dear Charming were giving her no choice; be it on them that she had to make this patch of earth yet another casualty in their quest to continuously rip everything that mattered away from her, all under the self-righteous flag of "good."

She stepped back resolutely and hesitated only a moment longer before conjuring two small stars in her hands, crackling balls of flaming gas, ready to torch the beans to the ground, all because Emma had lied to her about the field's existence, about the little fact that - no matter what she said to the contrary - her pompous parents wanted to rip Henry from her, bringing him back to the land that Regina should be introducing him to, not... _them_.

A seed of doubt forced Regina's hesitation before she set the field alight. Nothing could have convinced Regina that Emma was to be trusted again._ Nothing_, she repeated to herself. Emma had become so much like her sanctimonious parents that it was physically sickening. Like watching them tear yet another person away from her with their smug belief that they have a monopoly on good.

_Bitterness_ couldn't accurately sum up her disbelief and outrage that Emma had betrayed her over the Archie fiasco and then betrayed her, again, by lying to her on that damned bench. _Heartbreak_ felt more like what it was, but Regina skillfully avoided addressing how the bumbling blonde could possibly hurt her heart.

For her part, Regina had almost successfully convinced herself that their fucking was purely clinical, merely something to do that prevented them from killing each other, from leaving Henry parentless from the intensity of their rages at each other. _Almost_.

So it only mildly surprised her that, as the miniature suns flamed in her hands, ready to be thrown towards the field in front of her, Regina hesitated as she recalled their countless liasons, the way Emma let Regina's name fall from her lips like a love song when she came. She hesitated as she thought of what she had found in her espionage endeavor that afternoon: something had stopped her from torching the field the night before, when she'd discovered its existence. What that something was, she wouldn't name - refusing to believe they had been sleeping together for any reason but homicidal management - but she had waited for Henry to go to his therapy session the next afternoon, until Snow, Charming, and Emma were in their apartment alone and thus sure to be discussing their plans.

She'd been planning to kill them all, except Henry, of course. Because after all they'd been through, all they'd done, all they'd built - albeit without words - together, Emma had lost faith in her, had betrayed her. Yet something - _something_, she insisted, that had no name, nothing like _love_ or _hope_ or any such weakness - drew her to their apartment to find out. To know for certain whether Emma's lie had been to deceive her or to protect her.

_She had transformed herself into an elegant grey moth, having a penchant for transforming into flying creatures when the opportunity arose. She'd fluttered into Mary Margaret Blanchard's apartment through the small hole in the screen in the window above her bed. She was thirsty for more information than she'd already gleaned about their plan to leave her behind, to rip Henry from her; thirsty for one final justification for her slaughtering them all; or perhaps - as Archie would undoubtedly suggest, but as she would never admit, even to herself - desperate for a reason to call off her impending destruction of Storybrooke, a stay of execution, because perhaps after all this time she knew in her gut that vengeance would be as hollow as her mother's chest had been for most of her lonely life._

_Whatever reasons she was willing to admit to herself, Regina arrived in moth form into Snow's kitchen with impeccable timing._ Or perhaps they really don't have anything to talk about but me_, she thought wryly, settling unnoticed on a cabinet above the scene, adjusting her wings comfortably as she reflected on her love of flying and secret love of shedding her human form, which had borne too much agony at the hands of other humans to bear sometimes._

Often.

All the time.

_She was snapped out of her thoughts by the sound of Emma, standing in a spot they had fucked many times, arms open on either side of her, yelling at a stunned set of parents. "Absolutely not! We are _not_ leaving Regina here!"_

_"Emma, it's not like she'll be alone in Storybrooke, I'm sure many others will choose to stay - " Snow said hurriedly, as though she knew that her daughter wasn't ready to stop yelling. And indeed, she wasn't._

_"Oh,_ yeah_," Emma was now scathingly sarcastic, and a shocked Regina shifted her moth-furry legs as Charming swallowed audibly. "Because leaving her with a bunch of fairy tale characters who were hell-bent on _executing_ her just a little while ago is such a _great_ plan!"_

_"She has her magic back now, Emma, she's not exactly defenseless - " David tried in his mollifying tone._

_"And you think she won't use that magic to tear the world apart to find her son?!" Emma raged, squeaking a little._

_Regina's anger flared at the assumption of her being violent until she realized that Emma had called Henry_ her_ son. She felt the silence in the subtle glitter of her wings as Emma glowered at her parents._

_"Emma," Snow began, and if insect eyes could roll, Regina's would have: she recognized Snow's _voice of reason_ tone. "Even though she's given us no reason to - " she held her hands up as Emma prepared to resume shouting, " - we want to give her a choice: stay here, or come with us and live in Rumpelstiltskin's cell."_

_Emma visibly blanched, and Regina flew down to the kitchen counter to see her better, and to get closer to Snow should she decide to whip back into human form and kill her right then and there._

_"We've been _trapped_ in that damned cell, Snow! We were miserable after all of five minutes! How could you even _think_ of letting_ anyone_ live their whole _lives_ there?!" Charming opened his mouth, but Emma slammed on. "And really, a choice? A _choice_? You keep saying you didn't have a _choice_ but to put me in that damned wardrobe when I was a baby, and this sounds awful similar to me! Doesn't it ring a bell? Be separated from your kid, probably forever, or let yourself be cursed, in this case by living in a cage, but have the possibility that maybe you'll see your kid once in a while, on holidays, if the benevolent rulers let him go down to the creepy dungeon thing to see you? What the hell kind of _choices_ are those?"_

_If it struck anyone in the room how Regina-esque Emma was sounding - albeit with her own style - they all ignored it._

_"Regina is the one who _gave_ us those choices, Emma," Snow reminded her in a small voice, but Regina had compound eyes only for Emma, who was breathing heavily and apparently still wasn't done raging._

_"No, she didn't!" she almost whined, and even Regina was momentarily confused. Emma plowed on, explaining. "The _Queen_ did all that stuff, not _Regina_. Sure, she's had a couple horrible slip-ups, but the woman you're talking about is some _past_ Regina, not the Regina _I_ know, and yeah, it's all part of her still, but _my_ Regina is trying her best for the kid she raised damn better than anyone else could have or would have for a decade, and I am _not_ gonna lose faith in her again."_

_Silence pounded against Regina's delicately-folded wings as everyone absorbed what Emma had said. She hadn't known moths' bodies could feel sexually aroused, but apparently they could, because her whole body lit up when Emma had called her _mine_._

_"Your Regina?" Snow repeated softly, gaping incredulously at her daughter, who reddened deeply upon realizing what she'd said._

_"_No_! I - she's her _own_, not - I - you know what I meant - I - she - you know what, Henry's getting out of school now, I'm gonna go pick him up." And in two swift and classically Emma strides, she was gone._

_For the first time in minutes, Regina shifted her moth's body so she could look fully at Snow and Charming. Snow looked determined. "It's not the same thing," she rationalized. "She'll come around, won't she? She's just caught up in the whole idea of being the _Savior_," she comforted herself, putting her head on David's chest._

_Feeling insect-vomit rising in her abdomen, Regina flew out the way she came in rapidly. She resumed human form and drove to the bean field, determined to put Emma's gallantry into action and cut off their means of returning to the Forest without her._

_Because Emma had stood by her before - had touched her body with a reverence no one else had ever had - before, then changed her mind. _He is not, he's mine!_ It was only a matter of time._

Which is why she was standing there, balls of flames in her hands, poised to set the bean field alight. She tried to tell herself that nothing could make her trust Emma again, even after what she'd witnessed in Snow's kitchen, but then... She had been drawn now to simply burn the field down, to abandon her earlier plan to reverse the Curse and erase Emma from her life, thinking that she, too, had become a worthless, treacherous, unworthy _Charming_. And now she was hesitating even to do that simple task, to burn down the hopes and dreams of Emma's parents. _Why_?

_The feather-light kisses to her temple and the way she tucked her in when she thought she was sleeping._

_Let her go, let her go, LET HER GO!_

_She's not dying._

_I know that look. I know _her_. I believe her._

As if in answer to a wish Regina hadn't known she'd made through her uncharacteristically confused amalgam of thoughts, a voice called gently and firmly behind her as a car door slammed gently shut next to hers.

"Regina."

The called woman rotated on the spot, flames still shining in her hands. Unexpectedly, Emma was alone.

The younger woman approached slowly but steadily, her hands out in front of her, palms first. "You want to torch this place, alright, fine, I can't stop you anyway. But I need you to hear just one thing first."

"What could you _possibly_ have to say to me, Ms. Swan? More patronizing dribble about how I tried to kill you and your _precious_ parents?"

She didn't know why she was baiting Emma, after the way she'd secretly heard the blonde yelling at her parents on Regina's behalf so recently. Maybe it was _because_ she'd heard that. The more she pushed the blonde - the harder she tried to make her lose whatever faith in her she seemed to have restored since the Archie incident - the more it meant if Emma refused to back down, refused to do what she'd done before; refused to abandon her. Regina hated herself for hoping that she wouldn't, and she hated herself for trying so hard to force her to.

To Regina's surprise - and to a hopeful fluttering somewhere in her midsection - Emma ignored her scathing quip.

"I need you to hear me apologize. I never told you how sorry I am for when I stopped believing you with the whole Archie thing. I let you down, and I was wrong, Regina. I was hurt and scared and confused. I go on what I see, and I saw something... but I was wrong, what I saw was a trick, and I should have known that, and I am so, _so_ sorry. I should have trusted you like I trusted Mary Margaret when all the evidence was stacked against her."

Regina bit her lip against being impressed that Emma had elided the fact that it had been Regina that had framed Mary Margaret to begin with. She tried to suppress memories of the wonders of the angered sex that had marked that time, and she wondered if Emma was having the same difficulty.

The blonde continued, stammering slightly at the utterly neutral look on Regina's face, unaware of the confused fireworks that were rocketing through her stomach. "I just... I was so hurt by what I saw because I - I wanted so badly to believe in you, and I did, I - I _do_, and I... whatever, Regina, the point is, I was wrong, and I'm so fucking sorry. Everyone's always turning against you: you didn't need me doing that, too. I'm sorry."

Silence penetrated the space between the two women as they locked eyes and refused to let go.

Regina spoke first, her defenses winning out over her desire to accept the blonde's apology and move back into a safer space with her. Her defenses won because Emma had surprised her by rolling into Storybrooke, sticking around, and becoming both her sworn enemy and silent lover; had surprised her by saving her life time and again; had surprised her by losing faith in her over Archie; had surprised her by yelling at her parents for her sake; had surprised her by showing up here, hands up instead of gun drawn; had surprised her by apologizing in what seemed like such a genuine way. And Regina did not like surprises.

"You're only apologizing so that you and your _saintly_ parents can take _my_ son from me."

"Yeah? Then why are my parents not here with me?" A sliver of hope flickered across Regina's eyes. She ignored it, hearing the blonde's shout of _He is not, he's mine!_ ringing firmly in her ears. "I'm apologizing, Regina, because somebody has to."

Regina laughed bitterly. "Oh, _naturally_, and because you're the _Savior_ - "

"Shut _up_, Regina, and let me finish! I never asked to be the goddamn Savior, any more than you asked to be the Queen!" Regina blanched and Emma continued, thickly, a storm of tears replacing fury in her voice. "I didn't mean we owe each other apologies. I meant the whole damn world owes _you_ apologies." Emma's hands were deep in her pockets now, and her voice became smaller, more sensitive. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why you joined your mother when she came back, Regina, but it also doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why you didn't blast me into oblivion when I reminded you of that on the bench yesterday."

The flames were still searing hot in Regina's hand, but she stayed her moment of assured victory - simply to quench her curiosity, she almost convinced herself - to pose a question, dry and unconcerned in delivery.

"Indulge me with your sanctimonious charm, Ms. Swan: what have my motivations been?"

Emma read right through Regina's dispassionate snark.

"Your mother convinced you she was the only one who could get you Henry. She turned he and I against you, manipulated us into betraying you. She broke you for her own purposes, but you still wanted her to love you, so you let her." Emma was saying all of this quickly, staring into Regina's eyes nervously, hands somewhere deep in her jeans. "And I think you didn't blow me up or even snap at me when I referenced you and her trying to kill me and my family by the beach yesterday because you know what she did to you just as well as I do. For your whole life, not just recently."

Emma took in a long, shaky breath, eyes suddenly interested in Regina's stilettos.

"And in this little fantasy of yours, Ms. Swan, why would I care that _you_ betrayed me?" Regina asked this half expecting a self-important, arrogant answer of the sort that would re-ignite her anger, which the blonde's insights, too accurate for Regina's to cope with, were rapidly melting, and justify -_ rationalize?_ - a return to physical fighting, which was about the only kind she thought she had the strength left for.

"I don't know, Regina. Maybe you _didn't_ care about me, maybe it was just me threatening to take Henry from you. That's for you to answer, not me."

Emma shrugged, her shoulders looking heavy with disappointment._ At what?_ Regina wondered incredulously. And she had never seen the blonde like this, so... _humbled_. Except those nights she held her so close to her before leaving... Except those times she'd insisted on Regina's beauty sincerely, when all Regina was expecting was to be fucked, not reverently made love to... Except that time outside Granny's, the night she'd actually invited her. Then ignored her. But come after her when she left... Had the thought of leaving Regina without Henry jarred her that much that it brought her to this? Or was this just a trick, to gain Regina's trust again?

Regina jerked herself out of her musings when she realized that the blonde was speaking again.

"You know what, Regina, screw it. Blast the damn field, I don't care. No one's ever given two shits about what you wanted - no one's ever rewarded you for doing the right thing - I certainly haven't. So go ahead, why not? The world's given you every right to be wanna blow shit up." Emma backed away from the field, hands raised at chest height to indicate a lack of tricks. "And before you accuse me of setting you up, I'll take the blame for it. They know I don't want to go back there, anyway: this world is my home. They'll get over it if they think I did it, but they really don't need another supposed reason to call for your head."

"_Supposed_ reason? Ms. Swan, have you forgotten whom you're speaking with?" Her tone was even and condescending, almost bored, but her heart and brain were in devastating turmoil: it must be a trick, a trap. Some kind of twisted manipulation, all of this, starting with that damned apology. But then... she'd known when the blonde was hiding something on that bench, felt it in her bones... she felt nothing of the kind now... and she had yelled at her parents... and kissed her so passionately the night she returned from the Enchanted Forest, the last time they'd made love... and she'd called Regina _hers_ to her parents... whatever the hell that had meant...

"No, _Your Majesty_." Emma just seemed impatient now, almost as though exhausted from all the emotions she was letting her sort-of-enemy-sort-of-lover see. Regina knew what it felt like. "I just wish everyone wasn't so hell-bent on blaming you for everything. If they weren't, they might see what I see." She said this almost reluctantly, hands deeper into her pockets than ever, but her eyes were absolutely sincere. Regina fought it: what was the alternative? Love was weakness, after all... _wasn't it?_

"Please tell me you see a sorceress more powerful than you'll ever be with fire in her hands that can destroy you and everything you love?" Even to Regina's ears, she sounded like a person clawing desperately for a firm hold on a world that was rapidly slipping away, on control she didn't know how to have if she showed any more vulnerabilities than she already had, than the agitating sheriff had already detected.

Emma sighed. "Do I see hell in hells? Yeah, I see that, Regina. But I also see the woman who was a damn good mother to our son all those years I couldn't be, who's helped him grow into an adventurous, kind, smart, healthy, curious little kid; all those things I could never have helped him become. I see the woman who would never, ever destroy everything I love because it would include hurting Henry; the woman whose mouth tilts upward into a little smile when she cums with my name on her lips and who thinks I don't notice that she cries whenever I go down on her because I don't think anyone ever cared enough to get as much pleasure from worshiping you as I do. And I see the woman who wants to accept my apology because you know as well as I do why we opened that portal when I touched you, and even if you're not ready to admit that, Henry would be so happy, and so would I, and I think so would you, if we both just dropped all our weapons and parented him together. As a family. Whether here or in the Enchanted Forest, we can decide later, but _together_."

The injustice of Snow and Charming accepting Neal, a man she'd slept with over a decade ago, and Rumpelstiltskin as family, but not Regina - who was their grandson's mother and whom Emma had been sleeping with (granted, they didn't know that, but still) for almost a year, had been burning through Emma for days, but it still shocked her to hear these words slip out of her lips. To Regina herself, no less. Maybe to Ruby, but... _this_? She imagined those fireballs coming at her instead of the bean field.

"And your parents? _Neal_? They'll just accept that, I suppose? _Us_ as a _family_?" Emma breathed for the first time in many long minutes, hearing Regina's voice break through: not the Mayor's, not the Queen's. Just Regina's. And Emma understood the many layers of the word "us." She proceeded with just about as much diplomatic grace as Regina expected of her.

"Screw them," she told Regina sincerely, shocking herself again. "This is about _our_ son, _our_ happiness, not theirs. I won't let anyone take Henry anywhere you aren't."

For the first time, she saw tears to match her own dancing in Regina's eyes as Daniel's words, unbidden, swarmed through Regina's heart and mind. Then love again.

"Now do you want to burn this place down or what? 'Cause honestly, you're making me nervous that you're gonna catch your hair on fire or something with those things." Emma gestured half-jokingly, half-anxiously, to the flames that were still burning - albeit much less intensely - in Regina's hands. The Queen immediately extinguished them, almost unabashedly.

"I suppose I can find other ways to reek havoc on Snow's hopes and dreams," she smarmed, sounding almost cheerful. Silence fell between the women as they began walking awkwardly back to their cars.

"Why don't we grab dinner at Granny's?" Emma asked with a determined air of nonchalance as she stood leaning on the half-open door of her bug. Regina started, her heart galloping desperately. Rule one of their year-long affair had been that it carried only into the places where they could fuck in secret: anything evocative of a more conventional arrangement - dinner at Granny's, for example - had by unspoken understanding been strictly off-limits.

Emma must have sensed this, and thought it might be too much, especially considering that she'd just spoken out loud about their affair for the first time, because she added, "I'm sure Henry would love to see you." The brunette stiffened, her heart skipping a beat, not knowing whether she was happy at the prospect of seeing Henry or disappointed that Emma hadn't meant what she thought she had. She refused to let the conflict show.

"If he's not too busy with his _father_," she responded, but fear, and only a slight tang of malice, flavored her words.

"He's not," Emma assured her, a crooked half-grin on her face as she slipped down into her car. Regina reflected fearfully on Neal's arrival in town and his constant and close proximity to the sheriff.

"Emma!" the younger woman heard as she was about to slam the door. She stuck her head and one leg out of the yellow death trap, elbows leaning on her knees, looking up at Regina expectantly, only mildly surprised that the woman hadn't bent to get into her Mercedes yet.

"What did you mean..." Emma's stomach plummeted as she realized two things: the first, what Regina was about to ask her, and the second, the fact that the older woman had stumbled over her words, something Emma had only heard her do once before.

_Em, I... I'm sorry._

Regina tried to recover herself, hands opening and closing like young clams on a beach burrowing desperately into the safety of cool, wet sand.

"What did you mean, I know as well as you do why the hat worked when you touched me?"

Emma rose fully out of her car, finding herself a mere foot from the brunette's nervous face, looking for all the world like she had that night outside of Granny's - awkward and hopeful and lonely and anxious - before Emma had acted out of fear and heartbreak and almost destroyed everything. She regarded the brunette for a long moment.

"I think you know," she breathed.

Regina's back went ramrod straight, and she raised her chin in the air as if to indicate that she couldn't really care less about the life-changing question she'd just asked. Summoning all her defenses to her voice, she quipped, "Indulge me, Ms. Swan."

Emma saw through her mask and considered her words carefully, heart slamming wildly in her chest.

She thought of what an excellent mother Regina was to Henry; how the mere mention of their son's name or the sound of his voice could calm her down from a homicidal rage; how all she'd ever wanted was to be happy; to be loved.

She thought of their power plays in bed, how guarded and in control the brunette would always be, except when she didn't think Emma was looking at her face; when she came undone and screamed Emma's name in the throes of her orgasms; when Emma slipped her hand behind the older woman's head as a pillow as she came; how when the blonde would whisper her name, it would toss Regina over her edge into blissful oblivion.

She thought of the fear that had frozen the very blood in her veins when she'd seen Whale threatening Regina, when she'd watched the wraith attacking her; the utter horror and heartache she'd felt when she let herself be convinced that Regina had killed Archie; Regina's smile when she'd welcomed her home from the Enchanted Forest, and the immense depth of their passion that night, the last night they had laid together.

She spoke slowly.

"You _know_, Regina. It's all over Henry's book: True Love is the only magic that can break through realms. And that's... that's what we did with the hat, isn't it?" She realized that her question was not rhetorical; that she wanted more than anything for Regina to answer her, to confirm the very thing she'd spent so long being terrified of, so many mornings slipping out of Regina's bedroom in her socks, pulling on her boots downstairs so as not to wake her sleeping enemy-lover.

She watched the tears scald Regina's eyes, and for once, the older woman's face was completely inscrutable to the blonde.

"_Isn't it?_" she repeated, unable to stomach the silence of the most pregnant pause she'd ever been a part of.

"Indeed it is," Regina answered softly, her voice rich with something Emma couldn't quite identity. The Queen didn't move, as though afraid that the woman with seven addresses would take flight at her spoken acknowledgment of their love. She marveled as Emma's feet remained rooted to the ground beneath them, both immobilized by the synergy of the air between their tensed bodies, poised on the cusp of a life-altering spiral, one from which neither woman would leave unmarked, unaltered, or unloved.

Or so they almost dared to hope.


	3. Chapter 2

Silence swelled between the women like a bruise long waiting to burst into an amalgam of blood-blistered colors. Emma's heart stuck in her throat as Regina's words repeated over and over in her brain: _Indeed it is._

Indeed it was True Love that had wrenched open that portal; indeed it was True Love that had crackled between them all those nights (and mornings, and afternoons, and in-between times) when their lips met and their bodies came together in an angry frenzy; indeed it was True Love that had almost escaped from both of their lips the first night they'd let their tensions spill over into the physical realm: the night Emma saved Henry from the mine.

_"We need to celebrate the safety of Archie and the boy!" Marco had said, interrupting the Mayor's quiet reflection on the piece of glass from Snow White's casket and Emma's refusal of a drink - not trusting herself to hard liquor after a day like that - for the third time._

_Regina was roused from her thoughts by Henry's sincere face, some dirt still marking his time in the mine poignantly. Though she wouldn't admit it, Regina was still on pins and needles, the terror having refused to abate. "Can we, Mom, please?" he had asked, and Regina - having been so close to losing him - was unable to refuse._

_"Alright, Henry, but don't think I've forgotten that the reason we require a celebration to begin with is your reckless disobedience." Henry frowned and Regina's heart broke. She didn't let it show on her face, but tried to inject it into her words, if not her tone. "But we can forgo reprimands for now. A celebration it is." She offered him a small smile and reached her hand out to bring him close to her. He shrugged off her touch and she flinched harshly: not enough for just anyone to notice, but Emma Swan did._

_As Henry dashed off victoriously to tell Graham, Marco, and Archie that they could all go back to Granny's and celebrate, Emma touched Regina's arm, as she had tried to earlier, when Henry was still trapped. Regina jerked away from her touch now as violently as she had then._

_"Could you please stop manhandling me, Deputy, and simply tell me whatever inconsequential thing it is that is clearly on your mind?"_

_Emma rolled her eyes deeply. "I was _gonna_ ask if you're alright, Madam Mayor, but since it's clearly _inconsequential_, I guess I'll just forget it."_

_"You've fulfilled your role as 'hero' today, Deputy Swan; you certainly have nothing to gain from tending to _my_ needs." Regina flinched internally as she heard the words leave her mouth, hoping the blonde wouldn't pick up on what she'd said. Nearly losing Henry had really caused her to slip of off her game... Emma noticed._

_"So you admit you need something then, Madam Mayor?"_

_Emma's voice was low and sensual, and Regina found herself desperately aroused and wishing the damned woman would put that horrid jacket of hers back on._

_Brown eyes bore into green as Regina skillfully affected the look of someone who was condescendingly bored with everything and everyone around her._

_"If you'll excuse me, Deputy, I _need_ to attend to _my_ son."_

_"Yeah," Emma called, stopping Regina in her haughty tracks, and the Mayor trembled inwardly at the chaos this woman was creating in her body. _It is simply because she helped Henry, and I'm still feeling vulnerable from nearly losing him_, Regina convinced herself with a fair amount of success. That this pull towards the blonde - expertly hidden in scathing words and looks - had existed, if less powerfully, long before today... well, Regina wasn't thinking about that._

_"He wants to have a little celebration at Granny's. Do you really think I'm not gonna be going, too? I'm not just gonna go away, Regina."_

_"One could only hope, Ms. Swan," the brunette retorted, but Emma noted the slight lack of conviction in her voice victoriously._

_Henry insisted on riding to Granny's with Emma, so Regina had to choose between letting him ride in the squad car with Graham and Emma - an awkward triangle of sexual tension that Regina didn't want her son anywhere near - or letting Emma ride in her Benz, a burning couple of sexual tension _(and something more?_) that she wanted Henry around even less. For reasons beyond her understanding, she chose the latter option, anyway, insisting that Emma clean off those damned boots somehow before clambering into the front seat of her Mercedes, Henry chatting happily from the back seat the whole way about how cool it had been to ride up the elevator shaft on a tether, and how scary it had been when they thought Archie had fallen._

_He paused for breath as they neared Granny's, and the tension between his parents - sitting poker-stiff in the front seat, refusing to even glance at each other, after the immense connection they'd felt between them that afternoon, the way their lips had almost connected in the heat of everything - was practically edible. He tasted it, and refused to ignore it._

_"It's really nice to just be with my parents," he said with a determined air of casualness, and Emma jumped in her seat as Regina swerved the car slightly. She eyed Henry through her mirror skeptically._

Suddenly I'm your parent and not the Evil Queen?_ Regina wanted to ask him, but she refrained. She left his comment hanging in the air like an emotionally-laden aphrodisiac between she and the new Deputy._

_At Granny's, though Henry had been excited to celebrate, he almost immediately fell asleep on Emma's shoulder. The blonde looked helplessly at Regina, who scoffed and bent to pick Henry up to take him home._

_"I'll get him, Regina; he's already all over me anyway." Emma had been referring to his physical position at the moment, but Regina read two meanings into her sentence and stiffened. Emma grimaced, remembering the tears in Regina's eyes that afternoon._

Just bring him to me.

_"Come on," she murmured to the brunette, passing her Henry's shrugged-away coat as she rose with him in her arms. Regina suppressed admiration for the blonde's strong arms as she swallowed boiling rage and insecurity at seeing her son wrapped up in someone else's protective hold. Emma noticed and stopped, raising her eyebrows and gesturing that Regina could take him if she wanted._

_"I wouldn't want to wake him, Deputy," Regina surprised herself by saying._

_"As you wish, Madam Mayor," Emma quipped softly in response, passing through the door that Regina held open for her and nodded a good night to Marco and Archie, mouthing a final thank you to the latter._

_Emma slid into the back seat with Henry as Regina drove silently home, glancing furtively in her mirror every few seconds to take in the sight of her son sleeping on Emma's lap. She wondered mildly if Emma had ever had a child sleep on her before, as the blonde was stroking Henry's hair as if in shock, and she angrily reprimanded herself for wondering anything so intimately personal about the woman who was such a colossal thorn in her side and threat to her family._

_As they had proven at the mine, the women worked well together when they agreed to a temporary detente, and they got Henry out of the car, up the stairs, and into bed with little difficulty. Emma shoved her hands deeply into her pockets as Regina roughly refused to let her tuck their son in, possessively smoothing Henry's hair out of his face, taking off his shoes, unbuttoning his jeans, fluffing his pillow, and wrapping him in his covers just the way she knew he liked._

_Emma cocked her head in awe as she watched, from the doorway, as Regina bent forward and kissed Henry's forehead softly, her lips lingering for a long time on his sleeping brow, one of her hands caressing his hair gently. Emma thought she saw a shudder run through the older woman, who had just a few hours before been terrified of losing the child now wrapped safely in his bed, as she heard a passionately whispered "I love you, Henry," slip past her normally so guarded lips._ _Maybe she was only safe expressing such vulnerable feelings in such a naked way when the object of her affection wasn't conscious to witness the depth of her feelings, Emma reflected. She blinked the thought away: she could not have such an understanding of this inscrutable and cruel woman._ Could she?

_Regina jumped slightly when she straightened, turned, and saw Emma in the doorway behind her, as though she had forgotten she was there. And, indeed, she had, having been so accustomed to tucking her son in alone for the past decade. She glared at Emma as she pushed her way past her and into the hallway, closing Henry's door behind them._

_"Hey," Emma whispered softly, grabbing Regina's wrist with a gentle firmness that Regina had forgotten anyone could touch her with. Anyone since... Daniel._

_Regina merely looked at her impatiently, in so much shock at the quality of the touch that she did not even make an effort to be released from Emma's grasp. Emma took a step forward, back into the forbidden space that Regina had entered earlier that afternoon, their lips mere inches apart, the cocoa, apple cinnamon, vanilla chai, and whiskey on their breaths mingling intimately in the rapidly closing space between them. Their eyes drifted down to each others' mouths as Regina gulped uncharacteristically._

_"'Hey' what, Ms. Swan?" she deadpanned, managing to control the potential trembling in her voice, successfully affecting the tone of someone who was not standing almost flush against a sworn enemy, one who had just saved her son's life, and was now standing in her bedroom hallway after having carried the son they sort of shared home._

_"You never answered my question." Regina blinked. Emma continued, her eyes alternating between Regina's lips and her eyes, knowing with more certainty each second that she hadn't misinterpreted the intensity of the sexual and emotional tension that had rocked the air between them, causing even Graham to back away, that afternoon._

_"And what question would that be, Deputy?" Regina asked, her eyes, too, traveling between Emma's mouth and eyes, but her tone was still dry._

_"Two, actually," Emma breathed. "Are you alright, and what do you need?"_

_"I believe you only half-asked me one of those questions, Deputy Swan. I'm concerned about your memory if you think that - "_

_And then her lips were drowning in Emma's, the blonde's fingers tangling passionately in dark chestnut hair, Emma's tongue seeking entry to Regina's mouth as she infused the most potent combination of tenderness and frustration into their kiss._

_And it was _their_ kiss, because Regina was kissing Emma back, opening her mouth to Emma's tongue and battling it with her own. Refusing to be bested, Regina took Emma firmly by the shoulders and slammed her into the wall across from Henry's bedroom, pushing her arms back heatedly until she had the Deputy's hands pinned above her head. Emma squirmed and moaned into the Mayor's mouth._

_Regina pulled away from her instantly. Emma almost whined. "If you insist on finding out what I need in such a brash way, Deputy, I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist that you let me teach you how to fuck with a child in the next room." Her voice was several octaves lower than it usually was, and Emma had to bite her lip near to the point of drawing blood at hearing the word 'fuck' escape the Mayor's perfect lips._

_Emma simply nodded eagerly, eyes darkened with lust, as the Mayor gave her a wicked smirk and sauntered into her bedroom, beckoning sexily for the blonde to follow. She didn't need telling twice._

_Clothes were ripped off almost immediately, and Regina knew and didn't care that her arms would be bruised in the morning from the battles they fought for dominance, almost dancing together in their constant switching of who was on top, whose hands were pinning down whose wrists, whose hips were grounding down into whose wet heat, whose cunt was being pumped by whose excited hand._

_"Regina, I - " Emma whispered headily as the brunette coaxed her through her third orgasm of the night._

_The brunette looked up suddenly, the lust rapidly leaving her eyes. "Don't you dare, Deputy Swan. I will _not_ have you manipulating my gratitude at your assisting with _my_ son to - "_

_"Wait, that's what this is?" Emma interrupted, rolling Regina off of her and blinking away her post-orgasmic haze roughly. "A_ thank you_ fuck?"_

_Regina smiled acerbically, though it boiled her insides painfully, for reasons she didn't care to address. She told herself it was simply because perfectly good sex was being interrupted._

_"Call it whatever you need to so you can sleep at night, dear," she said cooly. _Lord knows I do,_ she thought bitterly, swallowing the knowledge that, moments before, she had been biting her lip to keep down the screams of her own pleasure at bringing Emma through another orgasm._

_Emma swallowed hard, carefully keeping her face clean of any disappointment. She shrugged with a callousness that didn't reach her heart. She started to slide on top of the brunette, as though the fact that Regina had said it meant nothing but an almost pragmatic exchange didn't matter to her. Regina stiffened, and Emma stopped and backed away immediately, despite their roughness not wanting to do anything the older woman wasn't pleased with._

_"Your endurance is surprisingly greater than I'd expected, Deputy, and Henry will be undoubtedly be awake soon. Unlike you, he is an early riser." She didn't have to tell Emma to leave for the blonde to know what she meant._

_Emma shrugged again, as though this, too, didn't matter, and for her part, Regina swallowed the vomit that was rising in her throat. She reprimanded herself harshly. She thrived on sex that bore little or no attachment to affection: how could _this_ possibly bother her?_

Lower me down.

Oh, no way.

He's my son.

He's my son, too.

_The woman hadn't denied that Henry was Regina's. Maybe she really did simply want the best for him... for all three of them? _No_._

_Emma dressed herself roughly and quietly, and Regina watched her with a feigned nonchalance. The Deputy hesitated when she was fully dressed. She swallowed hard, looking down at Regina's still proudly naked and absolutely beautiful form. She forced a casual offer out of her swollen lips._

_"If you ever, uh... feel the need to _thank me_ again... I mean I did save his life..."_

_"Oh, you'll find I can have my way with you for any reason I choose, Deputy Swan," Regina intoned salaciously before gesturing Emma dismissively towards the door._

_She had to bite her lip harder than she'd had to suppress the screams of her fullest orgasm to not call after Emma, to beckon her back, to tell her that no one since Daniel had ever touched her as reverently as Emma had, that even though their sex had been rough, she'd felt the blonde's restraint, never wanting to really hurt her, always dedicated to find just the right spot, just the right pressure, just the right tempo, to make her cum harder than she ever had. And no one had done that before, and that meant so much more to Regina than a_ thank you_ fuck. As did Emma's evident willingness to lay it all on the line for Henry._

I was afraid of the dark, but now it's all that I want, all that I want, all that I want

_Her lip bled slightly, and she was silent as Emma let herself out of the mansion, alone._

Emma wondered if Regina, too, was thinking about that night, that first night they'd begun this long, twisted journey of loving each other without admitting it, wondering if Regina, too, had felt the pain Emma had felt, if telling her it was a 'thank you' fuck had been an act as Emma's nonchalance and devil-may-care attitude had been.

Their eyes remained connected across their cars for minutes that seemed like hours and seconds at the same time, and Regina was the first one to break the silence.

"Please tell me that you don't feel compelled to follow in your parents' footsteps and live the rest of our lives on a perpetual quest to _find_ each other," she remarked dryly, with a determined casualness that refused to betray the utter chaos that her entire body and mind - and heart - had been tossed into by Emma's explanation, by her own admittance, that it was True Love that was keeping these women alive and in each other's lives.

Emma glared at the brunette artificially, almost playfully, for once at a loss as to how else to respond to Regina's snark. She was saved by a sudden vibration in her jacket pocket, and she mouthed "Henry" at Regina before picking up.

"Hey kid, what's up?"

She smiled crookedly at the concern in his voice, and Regina shifted uncomfortably.

"Yeah, your mom's fine, Henry, she's right here with me. Listen, she and I were just saying how great it would be for the three of us to grab dinner at Granny's... what? No, one of us'll pick you up... 15 minutes?... Yeah... Okay. Bye."

Emma grinned at Regina almost sheepishly, pocketing her phone.

"Why was he concerned about me?" Regina asked, danger in her voice.

"I was walking him home from the bus when I saw you driving in this direction," Emma shrugged, as though now unafraid of Regina's wrath. "I noticed you looked more tense than usual, and I guessed where you were going, so I told him to go home and I was gonna go make sure you're okay."

"And he was... _concerned_?" Regina asked, her voice like a tentative step onto thin ice.

"_Yes_," Emma told her firmly, both women recalling the last time they'd had an exchange like that.

_Did Henry really ask you to protect me?_

_Yes._

Regina's relief had mingled with infuriating disappointment then, uncertainty raging through her, that the blonde would not be fighting for her on her own, but was only doing so to spare their son's feelings. Her smile had been somewhat genuine, somewhat forced. She repeated the gesture to Emma now as she stepped around her to the driver's side of her car.

Something snapped inside of Emma, something hidden, something painful. She suddenly didn't want to close herself off from this woman who took such care to hide so much - like she did - all the time, except in those precious few moments; she didn't want to be encased in different heaps of metal and glass and paint than this woman right now, even if it was only for a brief ride.

"Hey, Regina, why don't we drive together? Michael still owes me some favors; he can bring one of his guys out here to get my bug later."

Regina raised an eyebrow. "Okay, lady, listen, you've let me ride your car before, and I'm pretty sure you'd have gotten those fireballs back up if I'd suggested leaving the flipping Mercedez here and letting someone else drive it back. Trying to be considerate here."

The older woman merely rolled her eyes and gestured for Emma to get into the Benz's passenger seat. Emma locked her car and gamely complied.

* * *

The slight tremor of the engine was the only sound in the car for several minutes, both women still reeling in shock. Though it had been Emma's suggestion to ride to pick up Henry together, she was at a loss as to what to actually say now. They were in close proximity for the first time since Emma had held a weapon to Regina's neck the day Cora was killed - Regina had even sat on a different bench than Emma to keep their distance the day before - and both were painfully aware of it. The tension rose as tangibly as it had the first and last time Emma had been in this seat.

Emma fiddled with the radio idly, deciding she'd rather risk Regina killing her for touching more than was necessary of her car than handle the silence any longer, or - worse - try to start a conversation with the woman whom they'd both just admitted was her True Love. Whatever the hell that meant.

_Not really sure how to feel about it_  
_Something in the way you move_  
_Makes me feel like I can't live without you_

Emma switched the radio back off quickly, grimacing. "Good timing, Rihanna," she muttered.

Regina glanced at her out of the corner of her eye, trying unsuccessfully to hide the fact that she was gripping the wheel entirely too tightly to hide her shaking. Daniel's words, unbidden, were tearing through her mind.

_Then love again._

He had begged her, not just given her advice. And as he disappeared - disintegrated, really, at the wave of her hand - she had at first stood upright, resisting the pain, but then collapsed to her knees, and the only word that could escape her lips was "_Emma_." David had come in, though, not Emma, and she had forced that memory out of her mind, erasing her crying out of Emma's name when his second and final death replayed nightly in her tortured mind. Until now. Tears stung her eyes as she wondered if Daniel would be happy, knowing that Regina had spoken aloud of sharing True Love again.

She cleared her throat, recalling the self-control she needed in being both Mayor and Queen. Emma looked at her furtively, not knowing if she was trying to tell her something or if she was really just clearing her throat.

Regina opened her mouth, then closed it again. Without warning, she pulled over smoothly beside the beach and put the car in park.

Emma stared at her, having not the faintest idea what to expect.

Regina unbuckled her seat beat and turned off the car, stepping outside into the crisp night air. The salty tang of the breeze helped her begin to breathe again.

Emma stayed in the car without a clue whether Regina needed time alone or wanted her to join. An impatient glance over the brunette's shoulder gave Emma her answer, and she scrambled out of the car and walked to stand cautiously by Regina's side as the older woman stared out at the water.

"Well, Ms. Swan. You brought... _this_... up. Now what do you propose we do about it?" Regina stared at the water, not at Emma, as she spoke, arms wrapped around her body protectively.

Emma blinked. And swallowed. And blinked again. Then she remembered that Regina was expecting an answer.

"_Do_? Uh, Regina, I - we need to pick Henry up, and - "

"Henry is accustomed to you being late, and I will not share a meal with you and my son, pretending everything is fine and dandy when in fact, it's not. I am choosing not to lie to him any longer, Ms. Swan. Something you might want to try," she chastised, and Emma wondered if she was thinking about Neal or the bean field. Or both.

"So, you're saying we need to figure out what to do about us sometime in the next few minutes because you want to make sure we're not lying to Henry?" Emma's brow furrowed as she tried to understand.

"This really isn't a difficult concept, Ms. - "

"_Emma_." Regina looked at her for the first time since leaving the car. The younger woman shrugged. "If we're going to figure this out, we're going to do it with you using my name. Emma. Okay?"

To her surprise, Regina nodded softly, staring back out at the water. She sighed subtly, and Emma stared at her, wondering where she went when she disappeared like this.

"I'm not going to run from you, you know. I know the whole number seven thing and all that, but I'm not going anywhere anymore, Regina. I have roots here now: Henry. And you..." She trailed off and glanced at the brunette, who was still staring out at the water. "Rambling, sorry. What uh..." She took a deep breath. "What do _you_ want, Regina?"

The Queen turned to her, fully facing her for the first time in many minutes, and told her softly the same thing that she'd explained to her son what seemed like yesterday and so long ago at the same time: "I don't know how to love very well." Her voice was soft, like it was when she spoke to Henry. Emma felt honored, and listened intently.

"You..." She turned her head to face the water again, as though looking out at it reminded her of her strength. And, indeed, it did. "You've seen what kind of a model for love I had."

Emma nodded softly, sensitively. She shrugged in what she hoped came off as a non-judgmental way. "I _had_ no model until I met you." Regina furrowed her brow, not understanding. Emma explained.

"You were the first parent I ever met who really would do anything for a child that didn't come out of her own body. I know the system has good parents in it: I just never had any. You were the first real mother I ever met, Regina."

"Well, with our models of love, what a great relationship we'll have," the brunette remarked dryly. Emma laughed. Loudly. Regina let the sound wash over her, and marveled that she could make someone's vocal chords tingle in such good humor, utterly lacking in fear. A smile ghosted over her lips, and when Emma noticed, it made her smile all the brighter. She sobered as she felt her phone vibrating. She ignored it, but knew Henry was getting concerned. She gently returned to the reason they were standing out here to begin with.

When she spoke, her words came out in a rush, her cheeks reddening with each passing syllable, earnesty and nervousness passing through her every pore as she thought of the pains this woman endured and how fiercely she managed to love anyway.

"But seriously, Regina. In a weird way, I learned how to love Henry from you. Maybe we can learn how to love each other, too. I mean, if you want to. We could also just ignore the whole True Love thing and settle for untrue love or something, not that I want to, because I want to be with you, but if you don't, then I - "

Fireworks exploded in Regina's mind and soul as the words slipped out of Emma's lips, and Regina couldn't help but crash hers onto the stunned blonde's, tongue seeking immediate entry into Emma's warm mouth. Emma groaned at the connection and kissed Regina back with all the passion she could summon, and they both drew their energy from the stars and the ocean and the very air around them as Emma brought Regina close into her arms as their bodies melded together against the night's distinct chill.

_Home_ was the only word that flashed through Regina's mind, inexplicably, over and over and over again as she felt Emma wrapping her arms around her, as if she were trying to draw her close enough to fully envelope her and never let her go. Regina slowed and stilled their kiss, pulling her head back to look Emma in the face. She hoped Emma couldn't see the immensity of her childish hopes - which a combination of Henry and the Sheriff always seemed to stir in her - fighting not to drown in the ocean of doubt and self-loathing in her eyes. Emma kissed her forehead gently, tentatively, as if understanding, and the tenderness of her kiss threw her hope not only a lifeboat, but a paddle, warm clothes, and compassionate comfort.

The closeness of their bodies was not unfamiliar, but they had never lingered close together when they were both fully awake, unless they were in a frenzied, often consensually violent, sexual passion. The new intimacy made both of their hearts jump into their throats as both normally mouthy women found themselves at a loss for words.

Emma was the first to break through the desperate uncertainty.

"I think we should tell Henry that we want to start to really try to parent him together. As a team. That's honest. We don't have to have it all planned out between us, Regina. We can play it by ear, see what's comfortable. Just because we share True Love doesn't mean wedding bells need to ring. Okay?"

Regina searched her face for any sign of subterfuge, of treachery, of malintent, of longing to run away hidden in her supposed willingness to take things at a slow pace that realistically, they both needed in order to avoid exploding everything before it began. It surprised her - and thus frightened her terribly - when she found none. She protested still, needing to fight even though the memory of Daniel's last request was telling her not to. Anything else would be too weak, too much like the weak honesty of Emma that had made her bring up this whole damn topic to begin with. Like the weakness that had killed Daniel. Like the weakness that had made Regina crash her lips into Emma's moments before. Like the weakness that was coursing through her blood right now, feeling an awful lot like love.

_No: it's strength._

Regina wondered mildly if Cora would have had the power to take her heart if she had stepped in front of her to protect Emma. Since they shared True Love... perhaps not.

_Cora_. She forced her mind back to the present.

"Henry is a precocious child, Ms. - Emma. He won't easily accept 'playing it by ear.' And I won't have him start to believe that his parents are getting together when, in fact, they aren't even sure what in the hell they're doing together." Her tone was dry rather than dangerous, but there was a flashing in her eyes that spoke of terror of the vulnerability of it all, terror in her love. She saw that terror reflected in Emma's eyes, but maybe the blonde was stronger than she was right now. She had just found her mother, not lost her, after all.

Emma nodded with a degree of thoughtfulness that surprised Regina, and the older woman's stomach contracted in the fear that always accompanied her surprise. The contraction ghosted across her face as the delicate skin on either side of her eyes pinched together slightly. She hoped Emma wouldn't notice, but knew she would. She grimaced.

"Then why don't we tell him the full truth?"

Regina's face colored, and Emma was glad to see the fire flicker behind her eyes again. "You want to tell our son that his mothers have been having hate sex for almost a year, Emma? Surely you couldn't possibly have concocted a plan that would have irked me more?"

But Emma tasted the grudging affection behind the brunette's voice, and she smiled crookedly as she shook her head. "I meant the True Love thing. Why the hat worked when I touch you. And we can explain to him that True Love is complicated, and hard, and it doesn't always mean that things will work out, but we want it to - I mean, _I_ want it to, but I - you - I - "

She trailed off, having rambled again, having rushed through her last sentence again, having forced the words out of her lips because now that they'd finally acknowledged what had been going on between them all this time - and the hat was proof that it was real - she couldn't help herself. Watching her parents accept Neal and Rumpelstiltskin as family, but not Regina, had sent her over a line that, now that Regina wasn't (currently) in a homicidal rage, Emma didn't want to retreat back from.

Nonetheless, she stumbled over her words and held her breath as Regina watched her, nonplussed.

"You want _things to work out_ with the Evil Queen. _You_. The _Savior_," Regina deadpanned in a slightly mocking voice.

Emma gulped and nodded affirmatively. "You're our son's mother, Regina, and you're... you really are an amazing woman. It's about time someone noticed. And I did, I _do_. And I lo - I want things to work out. And I don't think there's anything wrong with telling Henry that. I mean, if you - if you think - if - "

Regina held up her hand, staring at Emma with a spark in her eyes that the blonde couldn't quite read; it was as though the older woman had never truly seen her before. And, indeed, she felt like she hadn't. "You are worse than your mother with this babbling, Emma, and that's an achievement I would never have thought possible. Come." She turned abruptly and began walking back to her car. "We need to tell our son that his mothers are dating."

Emma almost tripped over her own two feet, and part of her thrilled at Regina's reassertion of her command of everything, and part of her wanted to yell in amused frustration.

"_Wait_," she said, stumbling closer to Regina. "So a minute ago you didn't know what to tell Henry, and now we're telling him that we're _dating_? Because we're _actually_ _dating_?"

"I believe you're familiar with the concept, Ms. - Emma. Surely not everyone chooses to wed after gallivanting through the woods together a couple of times like your parents did..." Her tone was smooth, but her eyes danced with an excitement that she hadn't felt bubbling inside of her since Daniel was alive; since Henry was a very young child and she was his whole world; since Emma had returned from the Enchanted Forest and she was forced to acknowledge why she had felt such raw fear and defeat at the idea that the blonde could just be... _gone_.

Emma laughed heartily, and Regina found herself unable to be frightened of this particular surprise. The blonde wrapped her in her arms again, and Regina - with ease that shocked her - returned the embrace and kissed her soundly on the mouth. Emma moaned happily and Regina's heart swelled as their tongues and hands and lips danced under the stars.

Neither woman noticed Emma's ex-boyfriend standing ashen-faced on the beach, mouth open wide enough to fit a tennis ball, until he managed to close his mouth long enough to clear his throat entirely too loudly, making both women jump and spin around, Emma's hands protectively braced on Regina's hips.


	4. Chapter 3

_If you missed the last chapter because of the email blackout, check it out! _

_For this chapter,** trigger warning** for brief allusions to rape._

_The end of this chapter and the next chapter will return more strictly to the episode: I just had to establish some things first._

_Hope you enjoy! Shout out to **spyffy** for being super-supportive!_

_Let me know what you think with reviews if you can! :)_

* * *

"Emma!" Neal half-shouted after the women jumped apart haphazardly. At the sound of him calling her name, Emma's hands tensed on Regina's hips, and she stepped in front of her protectively, as though instinctively knowing everything he was about to say.

He ran up to them rapidly, a mixture of confusion, fear, anger, and something both women recognized as poorly-hidden arousal written on his face.

"What did you do to her, _Your Majesty_? What spell do you have her under?" Emma rolled her eyes aggressively as she felt Regina's body clench invisibly.

Before Regina could open her mouth, Emma cut in scathingly. "Yeah, Neal, because it's _so_ unbelievable that I would, on my own accord, kiss a woman who is not only fucking _gorgeous_, but who raised my kid to be the pretty damn perfect little boy you've been getting to know for the past couple weeks. So shocking that I would lo - care about someone who's done nothing but protect her son in the past decade."

Regina's lips parted slightly as she stared at the fire in Emma's eyes, not having the desire to take in the utter bewilderment in Neal's.

She had never been truly defended by anyone else.

Her father had tried to, meekly, and failed, for decades, failed.

Daniel had tried to, subtly, and accidentally triggered her to lash out at him, for fear that her mother would catch on to their budding relationship and put an end to it sooner than she did.

Cora had tried to, twistedly, manipulating her into power, but she had forced her into a powerless marriage that fueled her need for control, for blood, for vengeance.

Emma had tried to. Successfully.

_You're going to leave me, aren't you?_ But she came back.

And again.

_Regina!_ The tape had stung as it was ripped off of her mouth, and her accusatory words bit into the blonde because they hurt less than gratitude would have. They were safer than gratitude.

And again.

_Let her go, let her go. Let! Her! Go!_ She had tried desperately not to show anyone how terrified she'd been of Whale at that moment, how much she knew he could make her hurt, the ways his anger and pain could sting and violate her in ways she hadn't been since Leopold.

And again.

_Then we have a problem... She's not dying._ The first time she'd defended her in front of her parents. It might have been Snow who blasted the wraith away, but it had been Emma who had rushed to help her recover herself.

Without words, hovering over her as the wraith approached.

With a final scream of her name, pushing her out of its grasp, getting sucked into the portal instead of her, perhaps forever. But she had done it anyway.

_I know that look. I know _her_. I believe her._ She hadn't been able to figure out whether they knew the door was left ajar - whether they knew that Regina could hear every word of the blonde's defense of her to her parents - but she had heard it nonetheless.

And this afternoon, to her parents. My_ Regina is trying her best for the kid she raised damn better than anyone else could or would have for a decade, and I am _not_ gonna lose faith in her again._

And now, to Neal. _She called me gorgeous._

Another thing no one had done since... the stable boy.

All of these things rushed through Regina's awed mind, but Neal didn't miss a beat.

"She's done _nothing_ but protect Henry? And I suppose the former Sheriff of this town was a threat to Henry, huh? Or have you forgotten whose badge you're wearing, _Sheriff_?" he argued fiercely, but with a gentle plea underlying his acerbic words: he had seen her hurt enough, had caused enough of that hurt, to want her to avoid any more pain, and if what he knew of Regina was true - and he was sure that it was by the icy look in Emma's eyes at the mention of Graham - then this was a recipe for disaster, spell or no spell.

Emma blinked hard, forcing down the tears that too often sprang to burn her eyes when she thought of Graham's last breaths, and the agony and rage of knowing that the woman she had been fucking at the time - and was now apparently _dating_ - had caused his heart to just... stop.

_What kind of person does that make me?_ Emma wondered momentarily as she reflected on her bond with the Queen.

"How _dare_ you?" Regina began, and Emma knew better than to stop her. "How _dare_ you, the son of the man who molded me into _exactly_ the kind of monster he needed me to be just so he could tear apart realms to find _you_?"

Neal's eyebrows shot up, and his jaw tightened defiantly. He laughed sarcastically, and Emma knew this would end no where close to well. "Oh, so you admit you're a monster then? Because you know something,_ Your Majesty_? My father had a goal, a reason, to become what he did: he was trying to protect his son. He has no excuses and I want nothing to do with him, but he had a _reason_ to destroy all the lives he did. But _you_? You had no son when you cast the Curse, and you had no son when you slaughtered all those townspeople just because they wouldn't hand Emma's mother over to be murdered. So tell me, _Your Majesty_: what in the hell was your rationale, your excuse? Nothing but pure bloodlust."

Uncharacteristically, Regina gulped, and Emma took a sharp intake of breath. She'd read about that massacre in Henry's book, and it was probably the hardest thing for her to come to terms with. She didn't know if she ever would, but she also knew that the woman standing next to her right now was not the same woman who had done that, not the same insecure, manipulated, caged, raging, vengeful, powerless-in-her-bed-chambers-and-most-of-the-rest -of-her-life woman as she had been all those years ago. This woman was one who lowered her eyes, fight gone, when Neal mentioned what she'd done; this woman was ashamed, was trying so desperately to be better, to distance herself from the person she'd become.

Emma watched Regina carefully, but remained silent, knowing that this was now Regina's fight and wanting to respect her ability to defend herself - or not - as she saw fit.

Regina took in a steadying stream of sea air and raised her eyes to look a breathless Neal in the face, his eyes burning in rage that he, generally such a gentle person, hadn't known he could have towards anyone but his father. He almost took a step back at the intensity of the connection when Regina's eyes met his, but he stood firm.

"You're right," she said in a small voice that was clipped but open, somehow at the same time. "I became a monster. I don't wish to discuss my past with you - your father has taken enough from me, and certainly you won't take any more - but I assure you that my reasons, while not excuses, were deeply felt, just as deeply as your father's search for you. But my son has changed me, in ways that you weren't able to change your father."

She raised her hands to preempt his objection. "I'm not blaming you, Baelfire, you were a child," she explained, almost as if he still were. "I'm simply telling you that you're right. I _don't_ deserve the woman you seem so eager to assume I've cast a spell on. But I don't get to make that decision for her, and nor do you. She and I have both had enough decisions made without our consent or knowledge to know that. Not that our affairs are any of your business, but I assure you that I have not cast a spell on her, and that if I did, she would have been able to fight it: she has magic in her, as well." She glanced at Emma, who was gazing at her with tears in her eyes and slightly parted lips, and she suppressed a small smile. "And now we need to pick up _our_ son for dinner. If you'll excuse us."

She turned on her heel - _hell in heels_, Emma had said, and Regina had to suppress a smirk as she imagined the shocked look on Neal's face - and strutted back to her car shakily, more grateful than she would ever admit that the clunky but somehow sexy sound of Emma's boots followed behind her.

* * *

They were silent for a few moments as they drove away. Again, it was Emma who spoke first.

"Damn, Regina. I was expecting fireballs again."

"You must get over your fixation with them, dear. They're quite elementary, really, and nothing to be so impressed with. Unless you have the magical skills and knowledge of a _Charming_, which you do, so I must say, I'm hardly surprised you seem so fascinated with them."

Emma snorted. "Really, Regina? You can't come up with anything better than insulting my parents? _Again_?"

"You must admit that those two idiots give one a great deal of material to work with, dear, so I can hardly be blamed for taking advantage of what they so willingly give out."

Emma rolled her eyes. "They're my _parents_, Regina."

"Yes, and they destroyed my _life_, Emma," Regina deadpanned, betraying no emotion as her eyes remained fixed on the road.

Retorts about Cora and Rumpelstiltskin actually being the ones who did so came to Emma's mind, but she stopped short of verbalizing them. Regina had just told Neal some of the depths of Gold's manipulation of her life: she was clearly aware of it, if unwilling to admit it when it was easier to hold onto than other grudges, so she didn't need to hear it from Emma, too.

An uncomfortable silence spawned between them as Emma fidgeted in her seat. Regina glanced at her appraisingly.

"Well, I certainly know now where Henry gets his inability to sit still from," she commented mildly, affection barely hidden under layers of dry humor.

Emma smirked, knowing Regina better than to think she was actually criticizing her.

"Yeah, but he gets his charm and good looks from his other mother," she flirted as Regina smirked, neither woman terribly bothered by the constant roller coaster they had just buckled into. Emma had never imagined life with Regina being easy - not that she'd ever imagined it before, she corrected herself sternly - so this constant cycle of dangerous territory and affectionate banter was just part of the job description, she supposed. At least, for now. It was terrifying for both of them, so oscillating between bitterness, defensiveness, salaciousness, and openness was to be expected. Especially between these two.

* * *

The younger woman reveled in the Queen's smile as they pulled up outside Snow's apartment building, Emma sliding her phone out of her pocket to call Henry downstairs.

"Yeah, come down... I know, we got held up - I - yeah, see you in a minute."

The women waited in almost companionable silence as they waited for Henry to come downstairs, the weight of what they had agreed to tell him hanging between them like a thunderstorm about to crash down.

His face lit up like one of the surrounding streetlamps when he saw them both in Regina's car. He bounded into the backseat excitedly.

"I thought you said _one_ of you would pick me up!" he exclaimed. Emma thought she could die happy if the last thing she saw was the smile that shined onto Regina's face at his happiness to see them both. He had seen Regina a few times - very awkwardly, very quietly - since her mother had been killed, since he had talked her down from killing Snow White and cursing him into loving her. He could tell she was trying, but he hadn't quite known how to feel or react around her.

Until now. He felt something different in the air around his parents, something less heavy, something more... full, more contented, less lethal. Something more like love.

_Maybe that's _my_ super power_, he thought idly as Emma turned around to ruffle his hair and Regina smiled that smile at him in the rear view mirror._ Knowing about love... I knew when David and Mary Margaret were meant for each other. It feels the same now, somehow..._

He glanced into the front seat at Emma, and at the way her eyes kept furtively seeking Regina's; he looked to his adoptive mother and saw some of the tension he usually saw in her shoulders almost completely gone as she beamed at him in her mirror and didn't flinch away when Emma brushed her knee with her hand after turning the radio on softly.

_Something's definitely going on_, he thought as he chattered excitedly about the horse he was bonding with in the stables, something he hadn't yet told Regina about._ I just hope it doesn't take a whole new Operation to figure out if I'm right for sure. Or to get them to admit it._

* * *

They let Henry talk through most of the meal, and he found it surprisingly easy to tell both of his mothers about his young life. He'd never had the opportunity before, and now that they seemed to be getting along - and there was that _feeling_ he got about them - he wanted to take full advantage.

"David says Lirr's not ready to let me ride him yet, and at first it was frustrating, but now it's fun to go there and brush him and clean his stall every morning and every afternoon." Henry hesitated for the first time, and Regina froze mid-stealing a fry from Emma's plate. She titled her head slightly.

"What is it, honey?"

He blushed and grinned bashfully. "Is it weird if I talk to Lirr about stuff? He's kind of like my friend now, so I don't even mind that he's not ready to let me ride him yet." He said this in a rush of words that was so similar to his birth mother's confessions, and he gulped it down with the milkshake Regina had eventually relented and let him have.

Regina laughed lightly and smiled at him, reaching out to touch his hand. He froze instinctively at her touch, and her heart quaked, but she ignored it, knowing he was still adjusting to seeing her as a whole person, not just as the murderous Queen she had been.

"It's wonderful that you're becoming friends with Lirr, Henry. Lots of people talk to non-human animals: I'm fairly certain I've heard Archie talking to that dalmation of his. And animals listen, you know, sweetie. In the Enchanted Forest, it's a special gift to be able to understand the languages of different animals." She nodded towards Emma. "Emma's mother has developed this, and so have I. I'm sure, with practice, you can, too."

Henry's eyes showed the battle raging between excitement and fear. "Is that _magic_?" he asked, his face falling slightly as his mouth twisted into an apologetic grimace.

Regina pursed her lips as Emma watched her carefully, knowing more with each passing second that what she told Neal was correct: Regina _had_ changed.

Henry's adoptive mother regarded him thoughtfully, an old, tired pain dancing in the skin on either side of her eyes - _I'm your mother. No you're not._ - but when she spoke, her voice was as open as Emma knew she could make it.

"No, it's not magic, honey. As far as I know, Snow can't do magic. It's like speaking another human language, except animals in the Enchanted Forest are clever: they can usually tell when humans try to talk with them to gain something from them, and when they talk with them because we regard them as equals." She hesitated, cocking her head to one side as she considered what she was about to say. Agony flashed through her eyes before the engrossed look in Henry's steadied her. "There are also animals who, of course, like humans, are interested in their own personal gain, and will befriend humans who wish to use them in order to use them back."

"Cora," Emma whispered sensitively, remembering when she'd sent a message via bird to Snow.

"Indeed," Regina responded with similar softness, her eyes wet.

Henry furrowed his brow. "And were..." He hesitated, not wanting to hurt Regina. But she knew what question was coming, and she swiped the back of his hand with her thumb encouragingly. "And were the animals that you could talk to your friends because you thought of them as equals or because of that other reason?"

Regina offered him a small smile, heartbroken but having expected the question. "When I was a child, horses were some of the only creatures I talked with - and they talked with me - and that was before I became the 'Evil Queen.' So you can make up your own mind about that, Henry," she told him gently.

He put his other hand over hers and squeezed. "I think they knew you were good inside," he told her with a sense of confident assurance that 'good will win' that only an eleven year old could have.

Regina gave him a watery smile and he returned it thoughtfully.

He glanced at Emma, and saw what he thought was love in her eyes as she watched the bonding between mother and son. His stomach leaped, and he felt more hopeful that his instincts upon getting into the car had been right. _That's like how David and Mary Margaret looked at each other..._

Emma interrupted his thoughts as she thanked a rather bewildered-looking Ruby for refilling their water. She cleared her throat, and looked at Regina with meaning. The brunette nodded slightly, and Emma ghosted a reassuring wink her way.

"So, listen kid, I'm glad you're back to being able to see the good in your mom. Because we've been talking, and uh - "

She glanced at Regina for help. The older woman picked up her thoughts flawlessly, ignoring the pounding in her head and the persistent too-fast thumping of her heart.

"Henry, how would you feel if Emma and I were to..." She looked at Emma, and the blonde nodded supportively. Regina took a breath to finish her sentence, but Emma suddenly found herself unable to contain herself, knowing from the anticipatory gleam in Henry's eyes that he was pretty sure what they were about to tell him anyway, and was happy about it.

"Kid, your mom and I are dating, and we want to continue to date: would that be okay with you?"

It came out in a breathless rush, and Regina tossed up hands that had previously been holding Henry's, her well-thought-out idea of how to explain it to Henry blown away by the blonde's indelicate inability to keep her mouth shut.

But a grin broke out onto Henry's face, and he almost toppled his chair over as he stood to cross to the other side of the table and knock the wind out of them both at once. They exchanged pleased but bewildered looks over his head, Regina having expected a fight about how Emma should be dating Neal, not the _Evil Queen_.

"I _knew_ something was different when I got into the car!" he squealed from their midsections, before detaching himself and walking casually back to his seat. He bounced happily in his chair.

"So I guess you weren't lying when you told Grandma you're not interested in Neal, huh?" he asked Emma keenly.

She looked askance at Regina, both of their eyes slightly widened. "No, Henry, I wasn't lying: I told you I wouldn't do that anymore, and so did your mom, which is why we're telling you this now."

He nodded as though satisfied as Regina touched his hand again. "Honey, that doesn't bother you? That Emma..."

"The whole Savior and Evil Queen thing, you know?" Emma cut in, and Regina groaned again. Emma shrugged. "It's accurate. Except the 'evil' part." Regina shook her head affectionately and closed her eyes as though to fight off an impending headache from the blonde's constant interruptions.

"Are you kidding me? I think it's _perfect_! What better way for everyone to get their happy endings?"

He was practically radiating his giddiness, and Regina's face colored happily. "You need to understand, Henry, that your mother and I still have our..." She cocked an eyebrow at Emma. "... _differences_, and we'll likely still have disagreements. But we need to explain to you that... Henry, do you remember when Emma got trapped in the Enchanted Forest?"

He and Emma both nodded, one with eagerness to hear more, and one in support and relief that she didn't have to be the one explaining this part.

"Well, the reason the portal opened in the first place... I don't know what your grandparents told you, but I couldn't get the portal opened on my own. It only worked..." She swallowed, not believing she was saying this to her son after so many months of painstakingly keeping her relationship with the blonde a secret from him.

"It only worked because your mother and I share True Love." She cut her explanation shorter than she'd expected, wanting to let it sink in. Henry smiled at her broader than he had in over a year.

"_I knew it_!" he half-shouted, and both women put their arms out to shush him. Ruby glanced at their table, amused and not at all stunned by the turn of events which, of course, she had overheard. The wolf-thing and all that.

"When are you moving in?" he asked Emma eagerly.

"Whoa, kid, I - "

"Oh, come on, if you guys have True Love together, then we've _got_ to live together! You can live with me and Mom. Is my room still the same, Mom?" he asked, the enthusiasm of a child who had just found what he'd always dreamed of pouring out of his very skin.

"Of course it is, Henry," Regina answered tearily, not bothering to correct him about the fact that dating didn't mean moving in. Because really, why couldn't it? If that meant Henry moving back into her life?

"Unless you'd rather continue to live with your parents, dear?" Regina inquired of Emma, her sass mixed with just the right amount of amusement.

"Oh _god_, my parents," Emma muttered, taking a long gulp of Henry's milkshake. Regina and Henry shared a deep laugh - the first in far too long - as Emma's face turned a deeper red than Ruby's hair.

Ruby watched them with uncharacteristic silence, amazed at how deeply that child had changed both women.

* * *

Watching his moms fight about something other than him - the check, in this case - was a joy for Henry, and he found himself taking happy advantage of their distraction to take a scoop of Regina's ice cream and mix it into Regina's coffee, making a beverage he could quite enjoy.

When the fight over the check was resolved with Regina's quip of "I assure you that I'll be more than happy to let you pay when we go somewhere more expensive than this god-forsaken restaurant, dear," Emma led the way out of the diner. She was still chortling so hard about Regina's face upon taking an accidental sip of Henry's ice cream coffee that she didn't notice that Tamara was walking into the diner at the same time. She walked smack into her.

Tamara dropped her bag and dropped straight to the floor to pick it up. Emma knelt to help her as Regina and Henry stood awkwardly around, Ruby gaffawing in the background over the general hilariousness of the situation.

"Sorry, I was - " Emma tried to explain.

"It's no problem," Tamara told her cheerily, "we all get distracted sometimes. Hey, Henry," she said, looking up at him and giving him a wave. Emma looked down at the paper she had picked up and was putting back into Tamara's bag.

_A list of everyone in Storybrooke and their fairy tale identities_.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach as August's last warning replayed for the hundredth time in her ears.

She slid the list into Tamara's bag without comment and offered her a falsely cheerful smile, noting furiously that Neal's fiancé didn't bother greeting Regina.

Emma grabbed Regina's arm as they left the restaurant, and she looked over her shoulder to make sure that Tamara had disappeared into the entrance to Granny's bed and breakfast, connected to the diner from the back.

"Something's wrong," she murmured in her ear urgently.


	5. Chapter 4

_This chapter is very Regina-thought-centric, and it is the crux of why I began writing this story to begin with. So many (amazing) stories focus on Emma 'saving' Regina, but well before And Straight on 'Till Morning aired, I'd been attached to the idea of Regina insisting on sacrificing it all for Emma, though it breaks her heart and will possibly end her life... I just had to integrate a few new story elements from the episodes to make it even more fun!_

_Again, the song is _Daylight_ by Maroon 5. If you don't know it, it might be good to listen to it or read the words for this chapter, which is pretty big on lyrics (indicated by italics) at one point._

_And again, thank you for the thoughtful reviews and encouragement: reviews spread love, so feel free to review some more!_

* * *

Regina didn't miss a beat as she looked down at Henry and nodded silently. She had felt that something wasn't right. She had felt the magic that flowed through her veins at once shrivel and expand full to bursting, hot and cold at once, glowing inside her like a warning when she met Tamara's eyes; the same thing happened whenever she met Greg's. Her magic only enlivened itself without her intent when something was very twisted, very dangerous, very threatening. She'd dismissed the feelings before as guilt over Greg and fear of what Tamara represented: would she become Henry's stepmother, would everyone accept her before they would accept Regina? Emma's murmuring that something was wrong sent a shock of odd relief through Regina: perhaps it wasn't all in her head, this perceived threat from two supposedly non-fairy tale, non-magical people.

"Henry honey, why don't you run back inside and sit with Leroy for a little while? Your mother and I need to discuss how we're going to tell her parents that you'll be sleeping in my home from now on."

Henry smiled broadly at her, though a little unsure. Emma hoped now more than ever that her lie-detecting superpower was not hereditary, and even if it were, that the kid had learned by now that it was definitely not foolproof. Whatever his hesitations, he caught Emma's crooked grin and did as his mother bade him.

The moment the door closed behind him, Regina stepped into the shadows off of the front window and asked, "What is it?"

"Tamara. She has a list, Regina: a list of everyone's fairy tale names and who they are in Storybrooke. August warned us about a "she" who would put all of Storybrooke in danger: all my alarms are going off."

Regina nodded slowly, her mind working rapidly, looking back into the diner, through the window at Henry.

"Did the list say anything else?"

Emma nodded, brow furrowed. "Handwritten at the bottom, it said, 'trigger, library.' Any idea what that means?"

Fear tore through Regina helplessly. _How could they know about that?_ Perhaps Cora had told Hook, and Hook - who else could have known about it, who else had Cora interacted with? - told them, without realizing that using that fail-safe trigger to reverse the Curse would be his own end, as well? So Cora was still, after her death, destroying everything Regina loved, all in the name of love, protection, power. They'd discussed the trigger, she and Cora, when she had broken Emma's belief in her, broken Regina's heart and mind and spirit. And Hook was Cora's only other confidant in Storybrooke. That simply must be the explanation as to how these newcomers knew about it.

But Emma must not know this. Not yet. Not until Regina could get a handle on just how much danger they were in, what risks she needed to take.

So she shook her head in the negative, biting her lower lip slightly. "What do you propose we do, Sheriff?" Her voice was distant, distracted, as though trying to remember something she'd long since forgotten. A threat she couldn't put her finger on. A rage she couldn't control. And Henry in the middle of it.

"We can't do anything to investigate tonight," Emma said frustratedly. "She just went up to her and Neal's room. First thing tomorrow, I can go investigate when she leaves. Can you track her magically and figure out what this library thing means?"

Regina nodded absently.

A devastating threat to all of Storybrooke. To Henry. To _Emma_. She hadn't had this much to lose in a long time.

The ghost of Greg ne Owen's father flitted through her mind, melding uneasily with memories of Daniel's kisses and his dying grip of anguish on her throat. Such potential, all lost. Unbidden, a new image splashed haphazardly into her mind's eye. The way that Tamara looked at her: the same way _he_ did, Owen-Greg. _Knowingly_. Did they _know_ the price of setting off that trigger, though, really and truly know it? Henry would be alone in the world. The little boy that might still live in Greg should understand that. She dared to hope, but doubted it.

She realized with a jolt that Neal was probably, right now, venting to Tamara about seeing she and Emma kissing along the beach, about the confrontation they'd had. If Tamara knew that she and Emma were involved, in love... If Tamara knew Regina cared for Emma, loved her... She could use Emma to get the fail-safe that she somehow, apparently, knew was in the library basement, use her to activate it, torture her before she and everyone except Henry died... _No_.

Regina kept her thoughts to herself, knowing that if they were right, that Emma would be safer knowing less. Because as it was, she was already at greater risk because Tamara will have heard of their kiss from Neal, will have put together from the ease of their laughter when Emma ran into her that they were an item, that now Emma, not only Henry, constituted Regina's weakness...

She would not let Emma's life and capacity for tolerating pain be used as a weapon against her. She would not let another lover, another True Love, be hurt, be killed. She began to understand what she needed to do. Tonight. Without Emma's knowledge. Because Emma would, ever a Charming, try to stop her.

She spoke to protect Emma from her musings. "Yes, I'll track wherever she goes in the morning: why don't you go disengage Henry from those barbarian dwarves? I'd best stay here: we don't get on very well."

Emma grimaced and touched her arm apologetically, and Regina offered her a tight-lipped smile.

She had to confirm the senses she was getting: she wouldn't throw her life away for naught. As the door chimed shut behind Emma, she summoned up an image of Tamara's frankly beautiful face into her mind and squatted onto the floor, touching where her sneakers would have graced the ground. She willed the tracking signal to be invisible, to instead send the information up her arm, through her shoulder, throat, chin, and directly into her mind, knowing Emma would return with Henry soon and not wanting to leave evidence of what she was doing. She closed her eyes and set her jaw against the heady rush the intake of magical intelligence provided. The tracking spell she'd placed on Tamara's footprints led to... _no_... the bean field... and then to the beach... but they had just come from both places and hadn't seen her... _The ship_. Hook's. So she must be right: Tamara knew about the fail-safe trigger.

She furrowed her brow and bent at the knees once more after furtively checking for Emma and Henry in the window, this time summoning Greg's face into her mind: she had noticed him in Granny's earlier in the day, and her magical awareness had tingled in much the same nervous way around him than it did around Tamara. She had previously dismissed it as symptomatic of a past she wanted to forget. But now...

Her magic found his footprints, and they led... directly to the same two spots - the bean field and the ship - albeit through a different route._ A child, now a man, here to find his father whom I murdered..._ A shudder went through Regina, knowing it couldn't be a coincidence: Owen and Tamara both _happen_ to be the only non-fairy tale people to come to Storybrooke, and at almost _exactly _the same time? And they had a sheet listing all their fairy tale and Storybrooke identities, and knew about the fail-safe? Storybrooke was in grave danger indeed: August had died giving Emma that information. No one else would. None except...

She knew what she had to do. She determinedly blinked tears out of her eyes as she readjusted her clothes and put a smile on her face as Henry and Emma walked back out of the diner.

* * *

"So, what are you gonna tell Gradma and Gramps?" Henry asked gamely.

"Huh?"

_Classic, Swan_, Regina thought irritably as she swiftly prepared to save the situation by telling Henry that she and Emma had discussed it while he was with Grumpy and the dwarves and agreed to have breakfast over the weekend with Snow and Charming to explain everything.

Lying, she told herself, was truly in his best interest here, knowing how he would otherwise take it upon himself to _investigate_. She remembered the mine disaster and felt justified in the lie she was about to tell.

Until a small voice that sounded an awful lot like Emma reminded her that he wouldn't have felt like he had something to prove if she hadn't been lying to him in the first place. Lying about everything wouldn't protect him, the voice said, and it would only make his thirst to investigate stronger, anyway: he would _know_. Just as Regina had known when Emma was lying to her on that bench.

She remembered the passion with which Emma had made love to her that night, the night of the mine almost-disaster, and she froze, taking Henry's hands into hers and bending to address him face-to-face. She hoped neither of them would detect her half-truths, her hiding from them that she knew exactly what "trigger, library" meant, and how deadly it would be for all of them if she didn't stop it.

One more half-lie, she convinced herself, wasn't as bad as another full lie. How could she tell him, anyway, that if she didn't stop Greg and Tamara, Henry would be alone forever? And if she did stop them, that he'd be without _her_ forever? She couldn't. But she could tell him as much of the truth as he could bear. She could do that much for him.

"Honey, I lied to you a few minutes ago. We weren't discussing your grandparents."

Clouds of doubt in both of his mothers fogged up Henry's face as he began to flinch away from her.

"No, Henry, please, listen to me." She glanced furtively around her as Emma did the same, before she focused her eyes back on Henry's troubled orbs. "Emma saw something... dangerous in Tamara's bag when they bumped into each other. She told me something was wrong and I wanted you to go back into the diner so we could discuss it."

Henry blinked as Emma took a deep breath, staring almost reverently at the skills with which Regina explained things to their eleven year old. _If only you knew what I'm not telling him, not telling you_, Regina thought grimly.

Henry's brow furrowed, his confusion and curiosity winning out over his sense of anger and betrayal that he'd been lied to again.

"But you're telling me... now?"

Regina nodded, her face opening up to her child in a way that Emma found herself envying. "I... _We... _don't want to lie to you anymore, sweetheart." _Any more than is absolutely necessary_. "I wasn't sure what Emma had seen, so I sent you away instinctively, because I was worried."

"Go on," Henry said eagerly, Operation Cobra igniting in his almost-smile, and Regina breathed a sigh of odd relief that the child seemed to be understanding her rationale.

"Tamara might be here to do something bad, Henry. Emma and I will need to investigate first thing tomorrow morning. We'll need to drop you off with your grandparents now, and Emma will spend the night with me." She glanced at the blonde to confirm, and the slight cocking of Emma's right eyebrow in the affirmative sent heat through her core that she immediately ignored. "And Henry, you - "

"I know, I know, I can't investigate on my own," he said, put out, but not altogether unhappy: he liked feeling a part of the plan somehow, and if staying at his grandparents' was the way he could do that, he was happy to help in that way. For now.

"What did you see, Emma?" he asked her, not letting go of Regina's hands as he looked up at her.

"A list, kid. Tamara has a list of all of our Storybrooke and fairy tale character identities."

Henry gasped. "The '_she_!' August warned us about a 'she!' _Tamara_!"

"Yeah yeah, kid, keep it down," Emma implored, though Regina smiled softly.

"That's my boy," she whispered, pleased with his cleverness. It made her heart ache that much more for her to say what she had to next, for what might be the last time: she knew her magic only crawled inside her skin when she met eyes with opponents that could truly destroy her. She mustn't let them get to Henry. To Emma. So she had to go to them. Stop them. Alone.

"Now, Henry, tell your grandparents what we shared with you, please, alright? And will you... will you just think tonight before you go to sleep of how very proud I am of you, and how very sorry I am for the things I've done? I love you, Henry. You'll remember that tonight, yes?"

Henry furrowed his brow. "You've really missed tucking me in every night, haven't you?" he asked sensitively.

Tears shined in Regina's eyes as she latched onto the excuse he had given her. She hugged him close to her, his head buried in her chest. "I love you, sweetheart."

"I love you too, Mom," he answered, and her heart swelled painfully. "But don't worry: we'll live together again really soon, as soon as you and Emma investigate Tamara and we can stop worrying about everything else. Okay?"

She smiled softly as they began walking again to the car. She said nothing more except a last 'I love you' to Henry as they drove to Snow and Charming's apartment and Emma walked him upstairs. Regina waved her hands towards the apartment, and invisibly protective magic marked her goodbye to Henry. Unknowingly, the blonde clamored back into the car a few minutes later.

"I told David about all the little tricks he has for trying to slip out and investigate: he'll be on the lookout. They'll keep him safe, Regina."

The brunette nodded as they drove back to her mansion.

* * *

"Now why exactly did you want Henry separated from us tonight? I know we have to get up early to investigate Tamara, but the kid's an early riser..." There was a tease in Emma's voice, and it stoked a fire deep in Regina's core.

"I think you know perfectly well _why_, Sheriff Swan," Regina intoned salaciously as they stepped through the foyer. She needed Emma tonight like she needed oxygen, like she needed the magical tingle that had been infused into the air throughout Storybrooke, the one that buzzed so unpleasantly when Greg or Tamara crossed her path. She needed Emma like Henry needed his imagination, like a soldier steeling her courage, strong enough to put her weapons down and cross into enemy lines alone and armed with naught but passion.

She needed Emma desperately, but the blonde couldn't, mustn't, know the full reason why. Because if she did, she'd keep her from going. She'd tell her they needed to fight this together. But no. They couldn't. Greg and Tamara had both been to the bean field already; they both activated warnings in her very bloodstream, magical senses even she didn't fully understand; they knew about the fail-safe trigger, and if they knew about that, they probably knew how to detonate it.

She and Emma couldn't do this together because Regina had to do this, alone, before Emma and Henry could get too involved, too hurt. As everyone did whom she loved. As did Owen, now Greg, now with murder dancing in his eyes. As did Daniel, so recently gone once again from her trembling hands. As did her mother. As did her father. As, almost, did Emma when she protected her from the wraith. As, almost, did Henry with that damned dynamite._ No more._

Because if she didn't retrieve and destroy the fail-safe before they could use it, they would come after the only two people she cherished. Tamara would know about her love for Emma by now, and everyone knew about the ferocity of her love for Henry. She had to go to confront them, alone. She convinced herself of this despite the objections, that sounded very much like Emma, screaming in her head. She would put no one else at risk. Not anymore.

But she needed strength before she went.

She claimed Emma's lips with a passion fueled by their acknowledgment of True Love; their new and raw acceptance of their feelings for each other; the terror she felt in knowing that she only intuited magical warnings about people who were truly deadly; the horror in knowing just how badly shutting down the self-destruct trigger would hurt before it killed her; the devastation of never hugging Henry or kissing Emma again after this.

Emma's groaning into her mouth enlivened her, brought her back to the present, to the only thing that mattered, to the only thing that was right. She caressed Emma's face as she kissed her deeply, their bodies flush against each other as the blonde's hands skimmed across her body reverently, sending pleasured shudders down her spine.

"I missed you," Emma moaned into her mouth, easing Regina's lips up into a smile as she allowed herself to feel now what she'd denied herself for so many months before: that Emma had, indeed, missed _her_, not just sex.

"Upstairs," was Regina's heady response, and Emma obligingly slid her hands under Regina's ass, parting the older woman's legs so she could wrap them around Emma's waist as the blonde carried her up to the bedroom they'd shared so secretly for so long.

Regina kissed Emma's lips and neck fiercely as she lost herself in the sensation of being in someone else's protection, in someone else's care, free-falling in the arms of someone who would never let her drop, for the first and last time.

Emma's hand fumbled with Regina's bedroom door momentarily, the brunette helping not at all by keeping her arms wrapped around the younger woman's neck and kissing her senseless, pausing only to stare into her deep eyes before smothering her lips once again.

_Here I am staring at your perfection..._

Their lips bruised each other as Emma responded to Regina's fervor, shutting the door quickly behind them as she carried Regina to her bed. She laid her down almost reverently, still kissing her, and Regina groaned as Emma's hands slid from her thighs to her waist to her chest, bracing herself with her knees above the brunette's body.

_...in my arms, so beautiful_

Regina shuddered with pleasure as the blonde unbuttoned her blouse and pushed aside her black lace bra, hungrily taking an already erect nipple into her mouth. A voice registered dimly in the back of her mind:_ love is weakness, Regina._

_I was afraid of the dark..._

But suddenly Emma looked up, her eyes seeking the chocolate orbs of her lover, and she smiled into her chest: the joy Emma was getting from pleasing Regina was... unbelievable. _Almost_ unbelievable. _No... it's strength._

_...but now it's all that I want, all that I want, all that I want_

Regina tensed her arms, and Emma knew the split second before her body moved outside of her control that Regina was about to take command. A thrill shot through her core as she, sure enough, found herself locked underneath her magical lover, moaning the Queen's name as Regina made quick work of Emma's clothing, pinning her under her own undressing body. For her part, the miller's granddaughter was overpowered by the desire to give Emma incomparable ecstasy, to take her to the edges of everything she ever dreamed possible, to ride her through as many earth-shattering orgasms as possible, before she... well. She could think about that later.

_I'll have to leave soon_  
_Why am I, holding on?_

"Regina, I - " Emma began, as she had the first time they'd been together, eyes fluttered half closed in hazy lust and love.

The brunette shook her head and silenced Emma with a kiss, pressing her now naked body flush on top of hers. "Shhh," she encouraged her. "Lay still and let me fuck you, Emma Swan," she whispered throatily into her ear, knowing how deeply affected the Sheriff was by the combination of Regina's swearing and uttering of her name. And, sure enough, Emma writhed desperately under her at that, grasping at her ass to bring it down to collide with Emma's core, biting down into the flesh of Regina's neck eagerly. The Queen smiled into her lover's abundant hair, relishing the effect of her words on a woman she thought she'd never get to make love to again.

_The sky is getting bright; the stars are burning out_  
_Somebody slow it down_

Delicate and strong fingers, perfectly manicured, slid deep and firmly inside Emma's molten core as Regina ground her hips sexily into the back of her wrist, which rested above Emma's clit perfectly, pressuring her in ways that were bringing her rapidly to her undoing. Regina buried her face in the blonde's neck, unable to raise her head from the emotions shuttling through her, fingers to heart, palm to chest, curled toes to hazy brain. She let herself be lost in the moans Emma was emitting, just for her; the way the blonde's body rose in response to her every exquisite movement; the feel of Emma's fingers and nails traveling chaotically from Regina's back; to her ass; to the tops of her thighs; to her tensed arms; to her sex-mussed hair. She prayed that if Emma noticed the droplets of water that were dripping off of Regina's face onto her neck, she was registering them as sweat, rather than as what they were: tears for all that was about to be lost, and all that could have been had.

_This is our last night, but it's late..._

When Emma came - Regina's name crashing through her lips repeatedly and loudly, her pitch as high and desperate as it had been that time she'd cried out her name as she saved her from the wraith - Regina toppled over her own edge as well, spurred by the pressure of her own wrist on her clit and by the feeling of Emma convulsing and contracting around most of her hand, which was beckoning forth her orgasm like she would never greet another one. And indeed, she thought, she wouldn't.

_...and I'm trying not to sleep..._

Several hours passed and orgasms were crashed through as the women reunited after all the betrayal and anguish that had passed between them. Only as Emma's eyes shut in the throes of her climaxes was Regina able to look fully at the blonde, heart breaking as she mourned the loss of their future together - _that goddamned fail-safe_, she thought, but noted numbly how she refused to blame the Curse itself _(without that, I wouldn't have Emma or Henry_) - and absorbed as much strength from Emma's love as she could. For her part, Emma watched Regina almost constantly, reveling in the Queen's pleasure, Regina skillfully hid her tears from the only woman she trusted them with, needing to avoid arousing the stubborn sheriff's suspicion.

_... 'cause I know, when I wake, I will have to slip away._

"I love you, Regina," Emma whispered contentedly as she began to fall asleep, sated as the dawn threatened to break, reversing their usual roles: tonight, it was Emma burrowing into the crook of Regina's elbow, Regina's upper arm, her pillow; her back curving into the brunette's stomach; Regina's lips lingering on her temples as the exhausted sheriff slept, feeling at peace for the first time since she'd returned from the Enchanted Forest and had been welcomed home with a smile from the woman who'd just saved her life and whom she was already beginning to accept that she loved.

"I love you, too, Emma Swan," Regina told her firmly, tenderly, and her heart shattered at the contented smile that graced the blonde's face as she sleepily brought Regina's hand to her lips and kissed it as her breathing elongated and evened out peacefully.

_And when the daylight comes, I'll have to go_  
_But tonight I'm gonna hold you so close_

Regina watched her as long as she could bear, trying to memorize the ways that Emma's sleeping form was reflected in Henry's; to learn by heart the way the blonde's body felt flush against hers, the strength of her own arms as they wrapped around the younger woman, holding her as close to her as she dared; to forever remember the sound of her breathing; to etch into her skull the small smile that formed on the face of the woman who had waited a year to be able to sleep in Regina's arms without having to slip away in the morning.

_'Cause in the daylight we'll be on our own_  
_But tonight I need to hold you so close_

Regina was glad Emma didn't know that this time, the roles would be switched. Forever. The one who slips out of their bed in the morning; the one who runs; the one whom people see as the savior. She slipped her arm out from under the blonde's head gently, soothing the confused sleeper with tender kisses as she disentangled their still damp bodies.

_This is way too hard, 'cause I know..._

Her chest ached as though someone were slowly ripping it from her body as she dressed herself, tears streaming down her face, hiding for the last time the marks the blonde had in their passion left on her body, and pulled the covers up over her still-naked lover. She wrote a letter for Emma quickly, silently, and placed it gingerly on her pillow.

_...when the sun comes up, I will leave..._

Destroying that damned fail-safe would kill her. She thought she might be able to die happy if the memory of the blonde sleeping so peacefully in her bed was her last good one.

She left the room with her fist in her mouth to stifle her sobs as she thought of Henry's happiness when they told him they were together.

_...this is my last glance that will soon be memory._

The dampness of pre-dawn air broke Regina's heart as she wondered if this was how Emma felt every time she'd left 108 Mifflin Street before Regina awoke. She shook her head roughly as images of the blonde leaving someone else's bed slammed painfully through her mind. Surely Emma would take other lovers after Regina had... Well. She'd be entitled, of course. But that wasn't for Regina to think about now. She focused on the lingering taste of Emma's core on her lips and the way Emma's powerful back arched as she screamed Regina's name out into the night. A small, mournful smile graced Regina's lips as waved her hands towards her mansion, enchanting it as she had Snow and Charming's apartment the night before, so that Emma and Henry would be safe from capture or coercion while she went to retrieve and inactivate the fail-safe before Greg and Tamara could get their hands on it. While she went to die.

A whisp of purple smoke enveloped her as she transported herself to the library.

* * *

She stepped into the elevator with trepidation, and wondered for a moment why she hadn't just told Emma the full truth and brought her here to help. Surely together, they could survive both retrieving and destroying the fail safe. But there was a risk. And Regina wouldn't take any more risks with other people's lives. With her lover's life. The still-opened eyes and slaughtered mouths of massacred townspeople flashed through her mind. Daniel's disintegrating body, crumbling at the wave of her hand, coursed through her brain._ Not again._ She had killed enough in the name of lost love. It was only appropriate that she should die in the name of found love. There was no reason to let Emma risk her life, too. It was too painful for her to consider what a hole she'd be creating in Emma's life - in Henry's - if she didn't survive. _They will have each other_, she told herself firmly.

She waved her hand and the elevator clicked, descending slowly. She recalled with a painful twinge the last time she'd operated this elevator. Looking down anxiously, watching Emma's progress, not hearing Rumplestiltskin come up behind her and thwack her in the back of the neck with that damned cane, taking advantage of her momentary unconsciousness to tie her up and tape her mouth closed. Emma had rescued her then. She was simply returning the favor now. Maybe now Henry would finally see her as a hero, too.

* * *

Her eyes adjusted to the dim light rather quickly, constantly searching the room for signs of movement. For Malificent, come back as Regina had known she would from when Emma defeated her.

Wondering why she didn't just choose to wear more practical shoes, and knowing too well the answer, she carefully and silently found Snow's casket, retrieving the diamond from within.

But this was too simple. _Where is she?_

And then her question was answered. An inhuman roar screeched from behind her, and an unearthly voice echoed across the cavern, both highly feminine and expansively anguished.

"I warned you once, Regina, that you would destroy everything. Don't make this mistake again: it's not too late to change."

Still, after all this time, Malificent was trying to convince her of the good she hadn't seen in herself in so long, except in Emma's eyes and Henry's hugs.

She felt a hot iron slam across her face and the entire right side of her body, as she was thrown haphazardly, like a child's toy rather than a powerful woman, to crumple against a cold, ragged stone wall. She felt blood seep out of her arm, but still, she clutched the fail-safe.

Apparently Malificent's encouragement was mixed with a lot of rage. Understandable rage. Regina stood shakily, staring up at the woman she'd transformed into a creature who looked like something out of Henry's comic books, reincarnated from the dust Emma had collapsed her into when she'd retrieved the True Love potion all that time ago.

"I _have_ changed," she insisted. "I'm taking this to destroy it, not to detonate it. I'm doing this to _protect_ love, not kill it."

The heat of Malificent's fury blew into Regina's entire body, causing her to stagger backwards and clutch tighter onto the fail-safe, it digging into her skin painfully.

"You'll _die_ diffusing its power," the ethereal voice reminded her matter-of-factly, and Regina couldn't tell whether the creature she'd created was excited or demoralized by this idea.

"I'll save everyone," Regina insisted, walking backwards and feeling her way behind her until her back collided with the metal of the elevator.

She whisked it upwards rapidly before furious claws could wrap themselves around her body and keep her there, company after thirty years of loneliness.

* * *

Regina collapsed, coughing, as the elevator clanked into place on the first floor of the library. The dust and heat had wreaked havoc on her lungs, and her arm and side were bleeding liberally to match the gash on her face from being slammed around by her old friend.

She waved her hand over her wounds and they stopped bleeding quite as much, though the gashes still stung. She'd never been good at healing herself.

Distracted by her injuries, she didn't notice the rapid approach of feet and cold metal snapping onto her wrist.

Her stomach plummeted horribly: she was supposed to destroy the fail-safe before confronting them, if she had any strength left for that. If she was alive for that. But they weren't supposed to _be_ here, waiting for her, like this. She wasn't supposed to have just given them the trigger like this. This isn't how her plan was supposed to work.

_You should have let me help you, Regina_, an Emma-like voice chided gently in her head, her heart palpitating painfully as she stared defiantly into the faces of Greg and Tamara, her magic unable to break through whatever metal they'd slapped onto her bloodied arm.

Pain shuttled through her body as she tried and failed to poof away. The magic condensed around the band that she looked down and recognized as some sort of perversion of something her mother hand worn - _had Cora helped them plan this?_ she wondered wildly - and reverberated throughout her body harshly. Undeterred by the pain, she tried to blast them out of her way, only to find the pain intensifying ten-fold, the intensity of the spell she'd tried to perform doubling back inside her body, exploding inside her instead of pouring out of her fingertips.

The last thing her widened eyes saw was Greg's triumphantly sadistic grin as he watched her realize her magic wouldn't work anymore. He watched the anguish and terror for Henry and Emma take over her otherwise proud and even haughty expression before he told Tamara roughly, "Bag her."

Darkness was her only companion on the painful trip in the back of their car to Hook's ship. The sun would rise soon. She'd written to Emma that she would succeed, that she shouldn't try to rescue her. And now she'd failed. Darkness wasn't her only companion, she realized. Misery was.

* * *

**A/N: So, as Leroy would say, I've got "terrible news!" I'm going to be away from technology for about a week and a half (which is great news for me, but crappy because this chapter is a cliffhanger...). But, the comfort for y'all should be that I'm very much a notebook writer, so everything should be written and ready to be typed up and posted when I get back. Thanks for reading (and reviewing)! Stay tuned!**


	6. Chapter 5

_My trip got delayed by a day, and since it's such a rainy day today, I decided to post for y'all: after this, no tech for a week (really this time). I hope you enjoy this one last gift before I ship off!_

_Many, many, many **trigger warnings** for this chapter. This is the one where I re-write the horrific torture scenes from _Second Star on the Right_. There will be graphic descriptions of the type of torture that there was in the episode - physical and psychological - and there will be blood and gun violence and threats of all sorts, so trigger warning for all of those things._

_I hope I captured (no pun intended!) the essence, but I didn't try to recreate the episode's dialogue because (a) I don't have the emotional capacity to watch that episode over and (b) I like working the characters in somewhat my own way anyhow. I hope you approve._

_Thank you in advance for any reviews you have the time/energy to give!_

* * *

Emma awoke with a small smile on her lips. Eyes still closed, she reached across the bed happily: this was the first night she'd ever let herself fall asleep next to Regina, and even though she knew they had a difficult and probably extremely dangerous day ahead, she was fully happy for the first time in far too long.

Her sleepily extending hand connected only with air and empty blankets.

Her stomach contracted. Her eyes snapped open. "Regina?" she called groggily.

She slid out from under the covers - which, she noted, Regina must have pulled over her, because she didn't remember doing so - and padded towards the bathroom that was connected with her bedroom. The door was open, and it was empty.

Emma looked back at the bed, bewildered, and noticed a business envelope laying on Regina's pillow. Her stomach twisted uneasily, beginning to put together what was going on. She sat on the bed, still naked, and opened the envelope - which had her name written in silky, flowing script on the front - with trembling fingers. She began reading with trepidation.

_Emma,_

_You were right about Tamara. I believe - I have a magical sense about it, a sense of warning, if you will - that Greg Mendel is also a threat, in tandem with Tamara. I'm fairly certain I know what they plan to do, and it will destroy all of Storybrooke - _you_ - so I've gone to stop them both, and I need you to respect that I have to do this alone._

_I need you to stay out of it, to stay out of harm's way so that Henry will not lose both of his mothers. I need you to tell him that I love him, that I have always loved him, and - if harm should befall me, which I believe it will, my love, because my magic only activates warnings throughout my body if the threat is immediate and lethal and because their plan will take all of my strength to stop - I need you to tell him that I was not, in the end, the Evil Queen, but Regina. Just Regina, as you saw me when no one else could. I need you to tell him how sorry I am, for everything._

_I need you to not be a blundering idiot like your parents and try to rescue me because I need you to be there for our son. I need you to know that it's only fitting that stopping them and saving you will be my undoing: if I don't do this, they'll only try to get to me through you and through Henry. I need you to understand why I cannot allow this._

_I need you to know that I love you. I need you to know that you could have been my happily ever after, but protecting Henry - protecting you - is far more important than protecting the happy ending of a woman who has destroyed as much as I have._

_I'm sorry._

_I love you._

_Regina._

A single tear drowned itself in the fibers of the paper and bled across Regina's signature, widening the letters and making her written name twist and writhe as, across town, the woman herself was.

Emma threw on her clothes and ran out of the house, snapping her cell phone open as she slammed the door behind her. She was too immersed in cold fear to feel Regina's protection spell leaving her as she left the confines of 108 Mifflin Street.

"Mom?" she sobbed for the first time in her life. "It's Tamara and Greg. We need to help Regina... No no, don't ask questions. Just get Archie and Ruby to watch Henry in case anyone comes for him, and you and Dad need to meet me at the library. _Now_."

* * *

"I don't know what you're hoping to accomplish," Regina intoned dryly the moment the bag was roughly torn from her head: she'd found it undignified to speak with it covering her face, so she'd refrained. She'd felt Greg's gun digging into her throat the entire car ride over, anyway, so judiciously decided it was best to hold her tongue for now regardless, as he had shoved her onto the floor of their back seat to ensure a clean get-away and leaned forward, talking casually to Tamara while he twisted the metal cylinder against her skin painfully on occasion, without warning and without provocation.

_Killing his father was provocation enough_, Regina thought bitterly, but shoved the thought away immediately. If revenge didn't excuse her actions, it certainly didn't excuse his, and what the hell was Tamara's investment in this, anyway? And if it was all about revenge, how did they know and why did they care about the fail-safe? No, this was beyond revenge - this threatened Henry and Emma - and it was this that boiled her blood and kept her alert and defiant as she swallowed the trembling in her tone and kept it silky and confident.

Greg laughed humorlessly as he brandished his gun at her forehead, eyes darkening as though he were imagining what it would be like the pull the trigger at such close range, while Regina took in her new surroundings, allowing nothing to move but her eyes. Her chocolate orbs widened imperceptibly as she took in the voltage meters on her right, having expected torturous pain as a side effect of diffusing the fail-safe, but not as a direct side effect of human hatred and sadism.

Greg grinned as he tightened the last strap around her arm painfully and began applying electrodes to the pressure points on her temples, to the vulnerable skin of her delicately strong fingers that had so recently been sharing so much love with a woman that she had told not to rescue her. She gulped and hoped it was imperceptible. Her heart had never beat quite so fast.

_I just have to fight it_, she told herself sternly,_ long enough to escape and destroy the fail-safe_. She struggled to keep her face neutral.

_Whatever you conjure, I can fight_, she heard the father of her lover's voice say, unbidden, swearing to her in her head. She certainly hoped she could.

Her stomach plummeted as she heard the conspirators discussing her fate as though she weren't there, but she knew that they knew, very much, just how there she was.

"Greg, I don't know that we have time for this," Tamara chided him cautiously as his tongue wet his lips while he concentrated on the electrodes, making Regina glad she hadn't eaten breakfast that day.

"I'm afraid I have to concur with your woman, _mate_," she heard Hook chime in with a surprising amount of disgust in his voice. "I'm not quite sure how torturing the Queen will help me skin my crocodile."

"Your crocodile can wait until your _Queen_ has learned something about what sons will do for their _fathers_," Greg retorted almost maniacally.

"Oh, that's something I do know about," Hook murmured as he made to leave the room, more unsettled than he was letting on. "Let me know when you've satisfied your blood lust and we can get back to the real task at hand."

"Keep an eye on him," Greg implored Tamara. She glared slightly at the idea of taking orders from him. "Please," he said, nodding towards the door. Regina couldn't see the woman, but could read from what she could see of Greg's face that she'd frowned. Hesitated. _Compassion?_ Regina wondered._ Or dedication to breaking more lives than just mine?_

"We have what we wanted now," Greg told her, obviously trying to be soothing, holding up the fail-safe. "And no one will be able to stop us, not without _her_." He jerked a trembling thumb down roughly towards Regina's bound and not-yet-broken form. "And Hook's crocodile certainly won't help them. Not anymore. We. Will. _Win_, Tamara." Regina wondered wildly if she'd ever sounded quite that out of her mind. Her heart was pounding in her throat, and it made it quite difficult to remember anything but queasy anticipation of the pain that was about to course through the wires he'd just connected to her body.

He was clearly intent on making her suffer unbearably. She might as well refuse to make it easy for him.

"And just what exactly is _winning_ for you, Owen?" Vomit was rising in her throat as the acid from her stomach forced its way up her esophagus, but she determinedly kept her voice clear of panic.

"That is _not_ my name anymore. You took that name from me!" His voice trembled and rose rapidly as his eyes widened, staring at her furiously as he made his way to his precious machine.

"So now you'll do... what? Do you really know what that trigger does?" She raised her eyebrows in as nonchalant and condescending a manner as the combination of the electrodes and her bone-freezing fear allowed.

"We have faith in people and causes beyond ourselves,_ Your Majesty_, something which you've clearly never had," Tamara protested, and Regina would have furrowed her brow if the tightness of the electrodes' pull on her temples had allowed it painlessly.

She turned her head slightly in Tamara's direction.

"You don't even know for whom you're working, do you?" The momentary silence gave her all the answer she needed. "Another pair of _idiots_," she seethed. "Do you have any idea what kind of power you're playing with? Two foolish children, playing with alcohol and a blow torch!"

"Sounds like you had your share of lonely childhood afternoons playing with fire, Regina," Tamara retorted silkily, and Regina suppressed a shudder. "But Greg and I have learned something from our loneliness: we've found a cause, and we've found guidance from powers greater and more important than you've ever been. Or now, ever will be."

Regina caught Tamara's smirk as she sauntered into her line of vision, and realization flashed through her brain, lighting it up like the electrodes were about to.

"You knew, didn't you? You bumped into Emma on purpose last night. You wanted her to see that list." Regina's finger twitched involuntarily from the tightness of the pressure Greg had put on it.

Tamara smiled confidently. "Your girlfriend's boyfriend called me after he saw you two by the beach. You might be evil, but we know about your first love: you wouldn't want your new love to be killed, too, now would you? So yeah, I bumped into your blonde on purpose last night. Made our job so much easier, to count on that little shred of "good" still inside you."

Regina paled against her will. So not only had she failed, but she had failed in _exactly_ the way Greg and Tamara - and Hook - had planned. They'd wanted her to get the fail-safe for them._ You should have let me help you, Regina,_ Emma's voice rang again in her head.

"So you came here searching for the fail-safe? Do you have any idea what a device like that is capable of?" Regina's voice was weakened by terror, but she proudly kept the trembling miles away from her vocal chords.

"Oh, we didn't come for the fail-safe, but we found out about it. And yeah, we know exactly what that baby will do: I didn't come here for you, Regina. I came here for the magic. You and Hook's crocodile have polluted this world, and we're going to cleanse it again." She raised her eyebrows to preempt Regina's objection. "No matter the cost."

Something stirred inside the older woman as she stared at Tamara's smooth confidence and saw straight through it.

"Who hurt you?" Regina asked, remembering Emma asking her such a similar question so long ago.

_You have no soul. How in the hell did you get like this?_

The smirk left Tamara's face and the amusement drained from her eyes. "Give her hell, Greg," she told him, though her voice, if one really listened to it, betrayed more fear than malice - Regina would know, having perfected such a tone herself - and she stalked out of Regina's line of vision.

Regina heard Tamara's footsteps retreating to follow Hook's, her question having spurred her to leave Greg to his prey. He smiled broadly, madly, at her. "Oh, yeah, I can do that," he said eagerly, leaning down over Regina, inches from her face, eyes ice cold, skin red hot as he touched her cheek with his index finger. She tried not to flinch and failed. His grin broadened. Breaking her would be such a fun sport.

* * *

She'd driven in a lot of tight and thoroughly dangerous situations. She'd outmaneuvered cops with their guns drawn and chased down men - because she always chose men's cases in her days as bail bondsperson - on the run from their past in cars countless times. But now, all Emma was seeing was Regina in some kind of fatal danger, and all she could do was run.

From 108 Mifflin Street to the library, she practically tore the sidewalk up with her speed, with the intensity of her strides. She only looked left or right to glance down streets to make sure her progress wouldn't get cut off by some car or other.

So Regina had known was "trigger, library" meant, and apparently, it was deadly. And Greg Mendel? Emma knew she'd never liked him. Her stomach expanded and contracted rapidly as she remembered his stupid Star Wars ring tone, his enigmatic "Her" in his phone contacts. "Her," "she." Tamara didn't want her name known. Emma empathized for the moment before she remembered that this woman was one of the reasons Regina had left her at dawn to go die, unless Emma could rescue her. Somehow. She didn't even know where to begin. Except, maybe, the library.

The horn of a brown pick up truck made Emma jump as she ran, and she turned wildly to see David and Mary Margaret pulling up beside her. Mary Margaret opened the door on her side and let out her arm to Emma, not bothering to ask why the blonde was running instead of driving. Her panic on the phone - combined with the fact that Emma had stayed at Regina's with no apparent explanation last night - had told her everything. Later was the time to discuss it. For now, her daughter needed her, and stars knew she owed Regina for what she'd done to Cora.

To Snow's slight surprise, Emma accepted her hand without question, her chest heaving chaotically as she clambored into the truck, Snow scooting closer to David so Emma could sit. As he began driving again, David handed Emma her gun - which, both her parents had observed without comment, she'd left at home the afternoon before when she'd gone after Regina in the bean field - and Emma noticed Snow's bow and David's sword in the back of the truck. She grimaced to herself, grateful that they hadn't hesitated to help her, even if it meant saving Regina.

"Tell us what you can, Emma," Charming asked her gently as his eyes stayed focused on the road.

"Did Henry tell you everything about Tamara last night?" Emma asked him. Both her parents nodded. Emma tried desperately to catch her breath. Wordless, she shoved the note Regina had written her into David's hand. She jumped out of the truck as he parked and read the letter quickly, tears sliding down his face. He exchanged a meaningful glance with Snow, who had read it over his shoulder, and they raced after Emma, who tore into the library, gun drawn, with both her parents at her heels.

Snow - taught by the best to track people - was the first to notice the blood. Before she could even open her mouth, David saw it, too, and caught her wide eyes fearfully.

"Emma," Snow began, her bow loosened now, knowing they were too late, as Emma continued to check between the shelves.

"What, you found someth - "

Emma's voice died as she met the compassion in David's eyes and followed the path of Snow's to the floor in front of the elevator. Before Regina had been able to heal herself of the wounds she'd received from her confrontation with Malificent, she'd dripped blood from her head and arm gashes. There was no other sign of struggle that Emma could detect.

The bottom dropped out of Emma's stomach as she collapsed onto her knees, her head spinning wildly. Spinning. _Spinning_.

She looked up, new determination in her eyes.

"Gold," she said simply. "You two finish checking this place out - you're better at physical tracking than me - see if you can figure out where they took her. I'm gonna go to Gold, see what sort of help he can give me. I just found him his son and got him to stick around town - he owes me." She scrambled to her feet and blinked the cold panic out of her eyes. "Call me if you find anything."

Her parents nodded as they watched her sprint out in the direction of Gold's shop.

* * *

"Now you're gonna tell me where my father is, _Your Majesty_, and you're gonna tell me now." His breath made her skin crawl and the touch of his finger to her cheek made her stomach curdle. She breathed again when he lifted himself away from her and put his trembling hand on the machine's switch. At least electricity wouldn't touch her like that.

"I actually don't think I am," she feigned lightness. "Because I've already told you. He left town shortly after you did, and I don't know where he is." She knew the more she lied, the more he would make her hurt, but she needed to buy time. Tamara seemed to need her alive - perhaps for guidance about detonating the fail-safe, or perhaps for the sheer sadistic pleasure of watching her witness everything crumble around her - so the longer she fought, the more likely it was she would be let up out of these restraints, perhaps let near the device. And if she could only get the damned thing off of her wrist, she could conceal herself from them and diffuse the trigger without their knowing it. But she was too tightly bound now.

The more Greg hurt her, the more likely it was that Tamara or Hook would cut her free, thinking her too weak to be a threat anymore. And then, well... she simply wouldn't be too weak. She mustn't be. Because the lives of Henry and Emma were in the balance. She had been ready to endure the pain from diffusing the fail-safe for them. What was a little - or even a lot - more? Surely she deserved it, anyway, she convinced herself.

"That's a lie," he told her menacingly, fingers twitching on the switch. She swallowed hard, but her eyes remained steadily locked on his.

"If insisting you're correct makes you feel better, then by all means - "

A dull click from the machine, and then fire and ice, all at the same time, ice in her bones and fire in her blood, her muscles tearing away from her bones, which were crunching into each other, and ripping out of her skin, which was being penetrated by thousands of the bluntest needles ever used. Her brain slammed repeatedly against her skull, which was contracting rapidly, never to expand again, squeezing her brain into unbearable agony behind her eyes, which were squeezed shut, like her mouth, determined not to scream, though it was all she wanted to do, as her throat was being torn apart anyway.

And then it stopped.

She breathed raggedly and forced her eyes open to look at him. A small smile ghosted across her lips as she thought of the strength of Henry's hug the night before when she and Emma had told him they were dating, how his chair had scraped back, how he had thrown himself fully into them both. How Emma's hand had squeezed her knee in happiness. The touches that made themselves known but didn't hurt, the eyes that seared but didn't burn. She beckoned them into her mind as she stared at Greg's triumphant lust, shoving the residual pain and her deep nausea way down.

"What point are you trying to prove, Greg? It isn't magic, you know, that's the problem - " She thought of the beautiful things she could imagine Emma or Henry using magic for - "but the people who wield it." She knew she was treading on dangerous ground, but the sooner she goaded him into upping the voltage, the sooner Tamara or Hook would force him to stop so they could move on to more important things. And she so desperately needed this to stop. "As with this technology - you're using it as a weapon, when so many have used it to save lives." Her voice sounded like it was dragging itself through gravel, like she was dragging on too many cigarettes, like she'd just been partially electrocuted. Which, of course, she had been. But, she noted with dulled pride, her throat wasn't yet too dry to speak (though, she knew, it would be soon), and she hadn't screamed and wouldn't cry. Not in front of _him_.

He simply smiled malevolently and the same dull clank of the switch being thrown panged through her stomach the split second before the pain greeted her body again. She gritted her teeth as she felt each strap bearing down on her body, slicing through her flesh as though made with the precision and sharpness of a dwarfs' ax, skinning her alive as scream upon bloodied scream died in her vulnerable throat. Her back arched involuntarily with agony, and her mind - what was left of it - took her to last night, the arch of her back as she came hard and strong into Emma's mouth, life flooding through her then as pre-death tore through her now.

And then, again, it stopped.

"I can do this as long as it'll take for you to tell me where he is. 'Cause feisty girls are so much more fun when they're tied up, wouldn't you say so, _Your Majesty_?"

What was left of her stomach caught fire as thoughts of her and Emma danced in his eyes, and where she had felt like she deserved the pain he was giving her moments before, she now simply wanted to see him on this table, her fingers curled excitedly around that switch, so that he could... _no_. Emma wouldn't want her to - _Henry_ wouldn't want her to - but still her blood boiled in a way that the electricity itself could never produce.

"_Women_," was all she answered him, the gravel in her voice lined with the silk of memories of Emma's wrists bound and secured beneath her, pleased excitement dancing in the younger woman's eyes. If any part of her found it bizarre that all these memories were surfacing _now_, of all times, she ignored it, needing memories of Emma like she needed to be released from this damned table.

Greg smiled again and cranked the voltage up. "Doesn't matter what words we use now," he told her. "Woman or girl, I'm going to _break_ you, _Your Majesty_. And then maybe your _girl_friend, too. Unless you decide to tell me where my father is?"

Regina saw nothing but red and she struggled against her bonds for the first time. He only smiled wider. Her heart collapsed in on itself as she took in the voltage meter's setting, more terrified than she'd been even when Snow and Charming had been about to execute her publicly.

"He's dead," she told him with feigned satisfaction in her voice. She glared, burying her compassion and her regret for the little child he once was as she proved it, telling him, "I had him buried at your old campsite after I had him killed. Go see for yourself."

She prayed those wouldn't be her last words as his inarticulate scream of fury sank into her bones even deeper than the physical pain she felt, her body free-falling through hell, knives sawing into her muscles as axes penetrated the tips of her bones, and this time, unbidden, a scream ripped through her already bloodied throat, her strangled yell joining her torturer's as her pleasured yells had, last night, risen to join her lover's.

* * *

"Gold!" Emma tore into the wizard's shop and halted directly in front of the counter, bracing herself on it with trembling hands. She found the man with company, and her stomach wrenched at the sight of Lacey fawning over him.

"Whatever are you going to accuse me of this time, Ms. Swan?" Rumpelstiltskin's voice was laced with impatient sarcasm, and he rested both hands on his cane with smoothly concealed agitation.

Emma nodded a greeting awkwardly to Lacey and looked at Gold with meaning.

"Ah, Lacey, I have some business to attend to, if you could wait in the back room - "

"I can be part of whatever business you have, Gold," the woman insisted, and Emma found that she didn't care. She spoke without preamble.

"Regina's in trouble, and I need to find her. You're gonna help me do that." She was every bit the woman she had been when she had fought with Regina while secretly fucking her all those months: cocky, desperate, passionate, and just the right amount of reckless. She found herself wondering vaguely if Regina liked or even loved those things about her.

Rumpel furrowed his brow in amusement. "Now remind me why I would do that, Ms. Swan? My history with Regina is complex, surely, but I certainly wouldn't object to having her out of my hair..."

"You're gonna do this because I'm telling you to, Gold, and because if you don't, everyone in Storybrooke will be at risk, including Lacey." She nodded towards the other woman respectfully, not liking talking about her in the third person in front of her, but knowing Gold would respond well.

She watched carefully as his face calculated the risks.

"It just so happens, Ms. Swan, that I owe your father a favor."

She grinned slightly, satisfied with her victory. "Perfect. So I'm cashing it in. _Now_."

"Oho, would you look a'that?" Rumpelstiltskin knew Emma had already won this fight, but that certainly didn't mean he had to stop toying with her before giving her what she needed. "You're willing to use my favor to your father without his knowledge, to find the woman who cursed you into growing up without parents?"

Emma glared dangerously. "You've manipulated her entire life even more than you've manipulated mine, Gold. And I don't give a damn that this is amusing you. Give me what I need to find her. _Now_."

"Listen to her, Gold. Give her whatever she wants." Emma had never been so happy to hear that voice as she turned gratefully to see her parents striding across the shop until David put his arm around Emma and kissed the side of her forehead.

Rumpelstiltskin raised his eyebrows as he opened a chest on the counter top, lifting a small vial delicately. He could simply create a tracking spell for them, but if Regina was in danger, in pain, he knew he could get much more out of this than simply letting the Charmings rescue her. Letting the Savior experience whatever torture Regina might be undergoing, well... that was a way for him to fulfill his obligation to David _and_ to satisfy some of the blood lust that raged through his veins whenever he recalled the prophecy and thought of Henry.

"This contains one of Regina's tears." He held it up to the light slightly, and it glowed subtly.

"How in the hell do you have - "

"As I said, Ms. Swan, our history together is _complex_." He handed it over to her. "It's useless to you now, dearie: you'll need to add your own tear to it. Mix them, and put the droplets in your eye together, and you will be able to see whatever Regina is seeing, feel whatever Regina is feeling. And with that, Ms. Swan, you shall find her."

"But how do I - "

"Oh, I think you have enough darkness in your past to be able to bring something painful enough to mind to make even _you_ cry, dearie."

Refusing to let herself cry in front of Gold, Emma nodded again to Lacey, turned on her heel, and stormed out of his office.

"Thank you," Snow told Rumpelstiltskin as she followed Emma to David's truck, where David had left the letter Regina had written her. Snow and Charming hovered awkwardly outside as Emma re-read it in the passenger's seat and let tears leak out of her eyes, catching one of them with the vial. When she noticed her parents, she tucked the letter into her back pocket hastily and dried her eyes roughly.

"I'm ready," she told them.

"There's no point asking if you're sure you want to do this, is there? This is why you yelled at us the other day, isn't it? Because you knew you loved her?"

Emma simply looked at her mother before raising her face up, opening her eyes widely, and letting the saltily enchanted liquid pour in.

She blinked, nonplussed, as Snow and David stared eagerly at her.

"Emma?" David asked her, concerned. "Did it work?"

"I don't feel anything," she responded distantly, her stomach sinking. "The sonuvabitch lied to - "

And then her body went rigid, her head slamming against the headrest, her back arching tensely and her feet colliding painfully with the bottom of the glove compartment. She had been abandoned on a planet drifting light-years from the nearest star, gravity too weak to hold an atmosphere, lungs gasping for air that wouldn't come, her bones being ripped out of her skin and being replaced by icicles. She willed her eyes to open as she saw Greg's twisted smile, hand holding down the lethal switch, and she dimly registered the dank sea air as the next wave of pain cascaded through her core, this time like fire as she was catapulted into the heart of the sun, skin boiling off of her body, leaving her innards exposed to singe off on their own.

Her mouth opened and a scream came out, though she hadn't meant to move her lips, and the world crashed and burned around them as Snow and Charming heard their daughter scream her own name in an agony and a voice that wasn't hers, but Regina's.

* * *

"_Emma_, huh?" Greg taunted madly, his eyes dancing with delight in her agony - the woman who had ordered his father killed - in the utter exhaustion with which her eyes closed, in the way her breath was coming slower and slower, more labored and less rewarding, as he upped the voltage yet again. "Our intel on the Evil Queen never told us she was _gay_." He was amused and she was dying. His pain leaked out in his taunts.

"Your understanding of sexuality... is as limited as... your ability to torture someone." Her voice was thin as a reed, forcing itself out between two thick slabs of slate, defying him even now because he had said _her_ name, and it had steeled her, and because she was nearing the point when she knew she would die soon, when Tamara or Hook would come and interfere, thinking her too weak to defeat them, and then she would summon the last of her strength to prove them wrong. Or so she hoped. She didn't remind herself that her last plan had failed miserably. She no longer had the capacity for doubt.

"I think you're lying about how much it hurts just like you're lying about what you did with my father," he told her manically, his hand ready on the switch. "Tell me what really happened to him, _Regina_, and maybe I won't kill you."

She laughed dryly, just one or two short bursts, her own past swimming in front of her eyes, which were dimly registering the fact that he had turned up the voltage again, and it really would kill her if he turned the damned thing back on. She thought of Henry and her heart twisted for the child this man had been.

"Killing me won't bring him back, Owen," she told him, her voice riddled with exhaustion and thick with pain. "On this, you can trust me. I spent... my whole life... seeking vengeance... and the only person... that ever gave me joy... was the only one I ever... tried to _protect_... to _love_..."

"Yeah, and you have some way of showing love, _Madam Mayor,_" he taunted, fury spewing from his eyes. "Ripping my father away from me and trying to force me to stay with you."

She closed her eyes, grateful that her body had no tears left, because she didn't want to show him that part of her, even now. "But I let you go," she reminded him softly.

"And my father?" he demanded one last time, bringing up both his hands to the switch.

She forced her eyes to open. "I'm sorry," her pain-laden voice told him, wishing she had let Emma help her. Emma wouldn't have needed magic to overpower these two. Emma didn't need a lot of things Regina did. Or thought she did.

"Too bad," Greg retorted as his hands twitched downwards.

All Regina saw was white as her universe caught fire once again.

* * *

"Emma, what happened? Are you alright?"

Snow had taken her hand into her own and Charming had climbed into the driver's seat, hands steadying Emma's slumped-over shoulder. If he knew his daughter - and he thought he did, at least in this - she would want to spend less time recovering and more time looking for Regina. He already had the key in the ignition.

"I..." Emma whispered, her voice crackled and broken. "That was the worst pain I ever... Regina felt... she... the beach." Her head snapped forward and she raised herself out of her fallen position quickly, squirming closer to David so that Snow could get into the truck. "I smelled the sea, and it looked like the inside of that old warehouse." She thought of exquisite pain and of Greg's cold eyes. "Drive," she told her father, checking her gun to make sure it was fully loaded.

"What happened, Emma?" David asked as he sped through town, glancing at her briefly.

"Mendel's torturing her. Electrocuting her. Something's constraining her magic, and she can't..." She felt waves of nausea rise in her esophagus, and she squeezed her mother's hand, which hadn't left hers since she'd woken from Regina's vision and feelings. "Just get us there."

David exchanged a worried glance with Snow, whose jaw was set and eyes were burning.

The Prince slammed the breaks where Emma instructed him, and they piled out of the truck. "You two try down there," Emma commanded when they shoved open the doors of the abandoned warehouse. Her parents unhesitatingly obeyed as she set off, gun loaded and cocked, down the darkest corridor.

She was hardly breathing as she jogged, the better to hear with. And hear she did - Regina's scream suddenly echoed around her, a short, loud, anguished yell, strangled and dying.

Emma sprinted. Seeing red, she burst into the room where the scream had come from, using three precious bullets on the machine Greg had been using to torture her lover and unloading two more into Greg's side, causing him to collapse onto the floor. She dimly registered David and Mary Margaret's rapidly approaching footsteps and Snow's shout of her name as she advanced on Greg, who was, despite his injuries, trying to escape through the nearest corridor.

All she saw was red as the blood from his side wound colored both her emotions and her sweater. Her breathing was labored - though not nearly as labored as Greg's was - as she re-steadied her hand and raised the gun up to his face. She took sadistic pleasure from the way he whined and crawled backward on hands that were soaked in Regina's suffering, retreating from Emma's hatred and drawn weapon until his back connected with the wall behind him.

"Did it make you feel like a big strong man to torture her, you goddamn bastard? You wanted total control over her? Were you getting off on taking everything from her? Well guess what, Medel? Men aren't the only ones who can use power to make people hurt. I'm gonna do the same thing to you."


	7. Chapter 6

_Thank you all for your warm wishes - the trip was an amazing way to celebrate a three year anniversary - and thank you also for your wonderfully kind and supportive reviews! More would always be welcome ;)_

_**Trigger warnings**__ in this chapter for gun violence, pain descriptions, blood, and threats of gun violence. And a brief description of spiders._

* * *

Emma's voice was low and lethal, sounding more like Regina the Queen - and understanding her more - than she ever had.

"You wouldn't," Greg intoned, clutching painfully at his side but still cocky, still on a high from the power he'd had over Regina.

She shot him a deathly smile and reloaded her weapon, putting it back to being inches from his forehead with a steadiness that surprised even her.

"You don't wanna try me," she told him silkily.

"Emma!" David shouted from where he was standing over Regina's unconscious form, fumbling with the straps binding her. He thought he knew what she felt like: he remembered having King George on the ground in front of him, helpless and waiting for him, gun cocked and ready, to shoot.

"Regina's changed for Henry: for _you_! That's why she's here to begin with. She wouldn't want you to do this!" He grunted as he tore another strap from Regina's limp arm. Snow looked up at him in mild surprise, but then, she hadn't been there, as David had been, when Regina had wept over Daniel. She hadn't heard, as he had, that she had cried out for Emma through her tears in the stables. And if the note Emma had thrust into his hand on the way over here meant anything - and they all knew it had - she'd subjected herself to torture and death to try to spare Emma pain. But he knew how much pain his daughter would have to carry if she pulled that trigger.

Greg knew, too, but was beyond caring: he didn't remember this woman from the last time he came to town, but she had lied to him upon arrival, and as far as he was concerned, anyone protecting magic or the Mayor - and this furious and infuriating woman was doing both - wasn't worth his concern.

"She killed my father!" he laughed, staring into Emma's gun in near hysterics, goading her, not knowing whether he cared if he convinced her to let him go or to pull the trigger with his carryings-on. "She said so herself! If she ever wakes up, you can ask her yourself! But she won't wake!"

He laughed again, and Emma's finger twitched on the trigger. She'd known Regina was a murderer almost all along: that hadn't stopped her from pulling her out of that fire or defending her to her parents and the entire town or caring how satisfying her orgasms were.

And it certainly wasn't going to stop her from pulling the trigger now. _Regina would understand_, she convinced herself.

_But Henry wouldn't._

She hesitated as her body became hyper-aware of itself, still tingling from the agony she'd felt when Rumpel had helped her connect to Regina. She felt a bead of sweat burn down her forehead as Greg readjusted his hands on his freely bleeding side.

"_Emma_," she heard Regina groan weakly from the table as Snow and Charming finally freed her of all her restraints, which had bitten excrutiatingly into her skin.

Emma turned her head towards her, renewing her grip on her gun, heart slamming wildly in her throat at the sound of Regina's cracked and broken voice. Her priorities returned to her with a sudden crystal clarity.

"I'm right here, Regina," she called loudly and gently as she jerked her head towards Greg. David got the message and pulled his own gun on the cowering figure before Emma ran to Regina's side.

"Get him to the goddamned hospital, he'll be fine: I don't think I punctured any organs," she told David, but with eyes only for Regina.

"What about Regina?" both her parents asked her.

"She doesn't need a hospital," she said as she took Regina's completely limp hand into her own, as though the solution had been clear the whole time. "All I have to do is focus on who I'm protecting."

"What do you mean?" Snow asked Emma as David pulled Greg into a standing position. Emma didn't respond, having eyes and ears for no one but Regina now, and if Snow intuited the answer to her question in Emma's face, she said nothing while she ran to kiss David on the cheek as he hoisted Greg onto his shoulders and out toward his pick-up. Snow set her jaw as she drew her bow and kept watch for Tamara at the door.

"Regina," Emma said softly, gently pushing the hair out of her exhausted face, Regina's eyes closed in overwhelming residual pain. The fallen Queen flinched harshly at the feel of Emma's fingers. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's only me. You're safe now," Emma told her earnestly.

Regina opened her eyes as though it was a horrible effort. And indeed, it was. Her skin felt detached from her muscles, which still burned as though she were sprinting through plasma in the center of the sun, and from her bones, which were frozen as though carved out of ice on Europa with a thousand knives of exquisite strength and devastating sharpness. Emma's soft touch - though she had carefully avoided the burns the electrodes had left - on her face had felt like an onslaught of spiders crawling and feasting on her dying body, but at least, she thought weakly, the sound of her voice was a vat of vaseline, a soothing balm for her agonized soul and body.

She opened her mouth with great effort as she tried to sit up. "No, no, shhh," Emma protested, tears in her eyes, but Regina shook her head thickly and continued to drag herself into a sitting position. She rested on her elbows for a moment before her arms gave out under her. Emma caught her head and shoulder blades, her knuckles taking the impact of the cold, unforgiving metal beneath her.

"You didn't listen to me," Regina chided softly, taking attention away from her failure to sit up, letting her eyes flutter closed. Emma smiled through tears.

"Do I ever?" she asked, and she gloried in the way Regina's lips curved weakly upward.

"You need to put that fail-safe somewhere safe, where no one can get to it. Protect it, never activate it. And you need to tell Henry I love him, Emma, and that I'm sorry." Regina whispered, keeping her eyes closed against the humiliation of not being able to sit up on her own.

"Hey, you can tell him yourself," Emma told her affectionately, trying to keep the tears out of her voice as she strained herself not to touch Regina, not wanting to frighten her again.

Regina smiled wryly, eyes still closed. "Take a look at what you shot, Emma." She paused for breath, her voice broken. "That _was_ you, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, Regina, that was me. I came to get you," she told her.

A small sound escaped Regina's lips, a sound that tried very hard to be both a laugh and a reprimand. "Look at how many volts he ran through my body, Emma. Well deserved, I imagine. The point is, you need to hide and protect the fail-safe, and you need to tell Henry." The agony and raw strain in her voice sent shudders down Emma's spine as she braced herself against an ocean of tears.

"No, Regina, listen to me. I'm going to heal you. I can use magic, remember?" she whispered, instinctively reaching out to touch the dying brunette, but stopping herself before she made contact.

"_Regina_," she said again as the older woman shook her head in weak disbelief. The called woman forced her eyes to crack open. It took her several seconds to lock onto the blonde, but when she finally slid into focus, she was giving Regina an encouraging smile, her knuckles white with the effort of not bawling, braced on the table that Regina had been writhing on mere minutes before.

"Hi," Emma whispered, a tear finally leaking down her cheek.

Regina closed her eyes again softly. "A beautiful last thing to see," she said so softly Emma wasn't quite sure she heard it, her voice full of cobwebs, her body beginning to shut down. "Your magic won't work on this, Emma. Even if you knew how to control it, they blocked mine off with electricity. You can't fight electricity with magic. It won't work. And that's alright. This is the punishment I get, I suppose. I've been trying. Everyone sees me as the Evil Queen, Emma. Even Henry, underneath it all. Let me die as Regina. Just you make sure you tell Henry that in the end, it wasn't too late for me to do the right thing. Tell him I love him."

"You'll tell him yourself, Regina," Emma insisted, more firmly this time. "I have to touch you now, okay?"

"_Please_," Regina begged, not knowing if she was begging for Emma's touch or for her to tell Henry, but knowing she was hoping that maybe, just maybe, if she prepared herself for the blonde's touch, it could heal her. It had started to before. Before the fire had scorched her muscles and chiseled her bones into ice as his voice and proximity made her skin crawl.

"I won't hurt you," Emma whispered as she placed both hands over Regina's raw and reddened temples as lightly as she possibly could. Regina barely flinched, relishing the soothing tenderness of the blonde's touch, contrasting sharply with the aggression of Greg's hands, words, wishes, and machines.

Emma focused on the little child who would suffer terribly if she failed. She focused on the young woman who had saved Snow White's life without hesitation. She focused on the older woman in a grey suit with concern emanating from every pore of her body running out of her house to wrap their son in her arms.

_Where have you been?_

She focused on the endless abundance of things their son was curious about because his adoptive mother had encouraged his intelligence and enthusiastic inquisitiveness from the start. She focused on how healthy he was, how well cared for, even when he'd had trouble recognizing it. She focused on everything Regina had given him that Emma had wished he'd have.

As Rumpelstiltskin had instructed her when she constructed a barrier against Cora, she focused on whom she was protecting.

She felt the heady warmth of magic coalescing somewhere deep in her chest, billowing up inside of her like waves on a windless day, suddenly flaring up like a beacon.

She focused on memories of Regina's sleeping form, the way she shifted her body to be closer to Emma's in sleep after their covert fucking, which neither of them would have called making love then, but both of them had admitted it was now. She focused on how beautifully soaked she made this woman, lapping up her ocean of arousal as though it contained a necessary life force (and indeed, it did); she focused on the exquisite arching of Regina's back as she crashed through her blissful oblivion with Emma's name on her lips; she focused on her orgasmic whispers of "I love you" mere hours before; she focused on the tears that slipped out of her eyes as she glanced down to where her fingers tangled roughly in Emma's hair, only to see the blonde's eyes alight with so much more than lust, her hungry lips curved into an ecstatic smile to be making the woman everyone else called evil feel so perfectly good. She focused on Regina's smile when Henry had so happily accepted and even embraced their spoken acknowledgment of their love.

She focused on her family. She focused on what she was protecting.

The magic that had cascaded to the point of bursting inside her flowed out of Emma's palms and channeled into Regina's body, a faint yellow glow accompanying its journey through the dying woman's body. Regina's eyes remained shut and her breathing remained labored, disconnected, and infrequent.

Something wasn't working. Snow watched her daughter's efforts with one eye silently and passionately. Terrified.

Emma's brow furrowed as she realized her face was wet with tears and sweat. The magic was flowing, but why wasn't Regina healing? She bizarrely wished for Rumpelstiltskin's aid, but then she remembered what Regina had told her moments ago - yet, somehow, also lifetimes ago - about magic being no match for electricity.

She focused on every time she'd hot-wired a car. She focused on every alarm she'd fused. She focused on every code she'd cracked, every electrically-wired system she'd hacked into. She focused on the bug she'd planted in Regina's office and the hot films she's secretly dreamed of making with her.

She focused on how to heal her lover.

The magic she was exuding flashed a brighter shade of gold as it surged through Regina's body with renewed strength. Regina gasped sharply, and - their bodies connected - so did Emma, the blonde removing her palms from Regina's temples, not knowing yet how to interpret magically shared charges and emotions, and terrified she'd made the pain worse. Regina blinked groggily, opening her eyes again and seeking out the blonde's concerned face.

"Regina?" Emma asked desperately.

"What did you do?" Regina whispered incredulously, her voice still weak but somewhat less full of gravel now.

Emma smiled, relieved tears slipping out of her eyes, her heart beginning to soar amidst stars that only sleeping with this woman or spending time with their son had previously brought her to. "Do you feel better?"

Regina rose back up to her elbows tentatively. "Am I no longer dying, do you mean?" she deadpanned, and Emma flinched.

"Too soon to joke, Regina," she told her, clearly wanting nothing more than to embrace the healed woman, but holding back for Regina's sake, knowing she couldn't handle the contact just yet. Regina smiled weakly at Emma's fake attempt to chide her for her poor taste in humor, enjoying for the moment the reversal of roles. Emma's smile in return lit up the room and Regina's still unpleasantly - but now, at least, consistently - throbbing heart.

Snow beamed, hesitations about her daughter being with the Queen stilled for the moment, from her position of standing watch at the door.

And then there was a rather loud and unpleasant bang, and suddenly Snow was doubled over in agony, her expression of shocked affection replaced by one of terror and exquisite pain. Blood pooled out from her side, and Tamara stepped back into the room, having taken advantage of Snow's distraction to shoot her squarely in the side.

"_Mom_!" was all Emma could strangle out of her lips, and Regina's heart wrenched at how very much like Henry Emma sounded when that word escaped her lips. Helpless and lost. Hopeful. Loved.

Emma froze over Regina's body as the older woman continued to lay still, knowing that now was the time she'd been waiting for: not, oddly, the Snow being shot part, but the Tamara underestimating her strength part. She steeled herself for a confrontation, relishing what Tamara did not know: that though agonized and buzzing her body and spirit still were, her strength had largely been restored by Emma's magic. By their love. And Snow would be fine. Regina instinctively knew Tamara well enough - saw enough of herself in her - to know that she wouldn't have shot to kill: not yet. She almost smirked at how well it was all turning out, how easy it would be to overpower Tamara now that she had her strength back, unbeknownst to the younger woman.

Until everything, again, went horribly wrong. Emma's strangled cry to Snow became, almost instantly, strangled by something that was not concern or fear: a sudden shuffling of feet and Snow's corresponding scream clicked in Regina's head so that she knew what she would see before she lifted her head and saw it.

Upon shooting Snow, Tamara had whipped across the room to swing one arm tight around Emma's throat, and was using her other hand to grind her hand gun into Emma's vulnerable temple. There was desperation in Tamara's eyes - the most dangerous emotion, in Regina's experience - as Regina sat up and stared at what had so rapidly unfolded behind her.

Emma's jaw was locked in fierce determination and terror, refusing to let Tamara or Regina see how she felt smaller than Henry and just as scared of the whole world right then; Tamara's eyes were glistening with a pain and fear that Regina recognized all too well but did not know precisely what it came from; and Snow had collapsed on the floor of the doorway behind them, blood pouring out of her right side, a look of pure terror and defeat that Regina hadn't seen on her face since the day she cast the Curse.

Emma's terrified green eyes sought Regina's chocolate ones as Tamara began to speak, finger curling around the trigger as Emma grasped at her other arm with her hands, trying to loosen her grip on her throat.

"Alright _Your Majesty_, here's what the situation is. I know Greg just put you through a lot, so I'm going to make this nice and simple for you: you tell me exactly how to detonate that fail-safe and bring an end to Storybrooke once and for all, or your girlfriend gets her turn on that table until you decide to cooperate. You try to resist, I shoot her. Your choice."

"Regina..." Emma grunted out despite Tamara's shaking her roughly. "_Henry_." And with those two words, Regina - though Emma's magic had healed her, feeling as weak as she had ever felt, and more terrified than she'd been since Henry had been in the hospital - understood the entire volume of things Emma was trying to communicate.

_If anything happens to me, you get out of this safely and take care of Henry. Like you've always done._

_Make sure he knows I love him, just like you wanted me to do for you._

_Henry and I believe in you. I'm sorry for the times I was stupid and didn't._

_Henry loves you._

_I know you're terrified, desperate, and furious, and you have the right to be. But please, right now more than ever, please be the person Henry knows you can be. That _I_ know you can be, that I know that you _are_: just Regina. Even if it means losing me, be the woman our son wants you to be._

_I love you._

_I always loved you._

_I'm always gonna love you. No matter what._

"_Emma_," Regina whispered in response, letting the younger woman know that she understood perfectly everything that the blonde had packed into those two words, those two names that held such a deep history.

Regina's eyes fluttered briefly to Snow on the floor behind Tamara, and she felt an immense wave of gratitude for the decades of practice at hiding her emotions. Because suddenly she knew they would all be safe, and she knew exactly how that could happen.

She had never liked surprises: not until Henry began surprising her with his pure thirst for logic juxtaposed with his utterly childish and wondrous lack thereof; not until Emma had surprised her by caring for her, by seeing her for who she was and who she could be when Regina gave her every reason not to; and now, not until she saw Snow, ignoring her gun shot wound, scrambling silently on the floor to pick up and set her bow and arrow, raising herself without sound on shaky legs to point the arrow at Tamara, nodding at Regina with a confidence she'd learned from her.

Acting as though she'd observed nothing in the split second it took her to look from one face to another, Regina turned her eyes to Tamara, as though the woman with the gun to Emma's head was merely interrupting an intimate moment. Which, indeed, she was.

"You're not a parent, are you, Tamara?" she asked evenly, fighting down the fear that this wouldn't work and focusing only on maintaining her cool to rescue Emma, whose look of pure terror yet calm faith in Regina wrenched her heart into so many pieces.

Tamara merely glared in response. "I won't be distracted, Regina," she answered indignantly, renewing her grip on Emma's throat as the blonde gasped subtly for air. Regina's heart burned like ice, but she ignored it, remembering Emma's two word soliloquy: _Regina... Henry._

"Oh, I rather think you will be, dear," Regina returned calmly, nodding toward Snow.

The desperate woman whipped around, dragging Emma harshly with her, and Regina rose silently from the table to slip up behind Tamara.

"You can't hit anything with that wound," Tamara told Snow mockingly, but kept her eyes glued on the her set arrow all the same.

"She hit an ogre in the eye her first time using that thing in 28 years. I really wouldn't try her." Emma's words were flippantly courageous, but her voice was thin and her breath was constrained, the crook of Tamara's elbow digging into her windpipe as the cool metallic cylinder of her hand gun pressured Emma's temple.

"She won't," Regina answered for Tamara as she swiftly plunged her hand into her back, withdrawing Tamara's heart from the back side of her rib cage with a grim look of necessity and disdain on her face. Tamara's eyes widened in tandem with Emma's and Snow's as her daughter was released and stumbled next to her bleeding mother, doubling over and trying desperately to catch her breath. Snow - now having dropped her bow and clutching at Emma with one hand and at her bloodied side with the other - and Tamara gaped at the heart pulsing helplessly in Regina's hand. Emma, however, had eyes only for her lover's face, as she, still wheezing, scrutinized Regina's expression to try and figure out what her intentions were now.

The older woman was still trembling, Emma saw, and her knees quaked as if in compensation for the steadiness of her hand as her still scorched fingers curled around Tamara's heart. Anger blazed in Regina's eyes as two of the younger women gasped, Snow in anxiety and Tamara in tightened pain. Emma was the only one to speak, and when she did, her voice was low and throaty, as though colored by the blood her mother was pouring out onto her.

"_Regina_," was all she could manage, and Regina's eyes swivelled to meet hers.

"If you ever trusted me, Emma, trust me now," the Queen told her calmly, her tone measured but genuine. Emma nodded once, and increased the pressure on Snow's wound. It was superficial, she knew, but didn't like how much she was bleeding. Regina shifted her gaze back to Tamara.

"I'm not going to kill you, dear. I know this experience is unpleasant for you," she continued, walking slowly around Tamara, who remained rooted to the spot, only her eyes, full of fearful resentment, moving to follow Regina as far as they could, "but I hope you can be consoled by the idea that I won't be keeping your heart out of your chest." Regina touched Emma lightly on the waist with her free hand as she passed in front of her, continuing her slow circle around Tamara. "But I'm afraid I do need you to tell me a few things before I put it back where it belongs."

Regina tilted her chin up imperiously, every bit the Queen that Emma had imagined and that Snow remembered.

Tamara, gun now hanging limply in her hand, was unimpressed. "I'm not telling you anything, _Your Majesty_, except that our cause will prevail no matter what you do to me."

The Queen scoffed and hoped that no one but Emma noticed the pain flicker across her face at the increased motion in her own chest. She had long since surrendered to the idea that she was an utterly open book to the infuriatingly endearing blonde.

"Brave and foolish words. But I think you _will_ tell me everything I want to know." Regina paused and stepped back in front of Tamara, positioning her face in front of hers and grinning softly. She lifted an eyebrow at Tamara's defiant but terrified swallow.

"Oh, rest assured, dear, I have a son and a lover who would greatly disapprove of my torturing or killing you, and you're really not worth the fallout with them. But have you noticed that you let Emma go? Have you noticed that I've been standing in point-blank range for many moments now, and you haven't shot me? Have you noticed that you're handing your gun to Emma right now?"

And sure enough, Tamara's hand was moving, seemingly of its own accord, finger sliding out of the trigger and offering it, base first, to Emma, who took it, a goofy and wholly inappropriate grin plastered onto her face at hearing Regina say she was her lover.

Tamara merely glared at Regina, unable to resist the control Regina had taken over her body but strong enough to register in her facial expression that she wasn't happy about it.

Regina smiled a patently Mayor Mills smile. "I see you're beginning to understand how this works. So Tamara, tell me: do you or Greg know for whom you're working? I don't believe you do, but could you confirm for me?"

Disgruntled, the younger woman answered her in a hollow voice. "We don't need to know. We believe in powers greater than ourselves that will - "

But Regina held up her free hand, thoroughly nauseated by people's ability to be played by those with broader agendas in which they were mere pawns. She suppressed a shudder and a wave of self-loathing as she thought of the man who taught her to do this.

"That's quite enough, dear. And are you and Greg working alone here in Storybrooke?"

Tamara shook her head mechanically. "Hook's been helping us."

Regina tutted condescendingly as she resumed walking around Tamara. "He's not been helping you, dear, he's been going along with you until he finds a better offer and a more lucrative opportunity. But alright. What has whomever you're working for told you about your upcoming plans? I want logistics, dear, not the quasi-pious speech."

Even under the power of Regina's hand, Tamara rolled her eyes. She spoke, however, as Regina demanded, utterly unable to resist the pull of Regina's power over her entire body. Had Regina been in top form, she wouldn't have been able to move so much as an eyebrow in a way Regina didn't want, but as it was, the older woman settled for knowing that at least she was controlling her main physical movements and her information sharing.

"When Greg alerted us to the magic he'd seen in Storybrooke - it took him many years to find us, as it took me many years before him - it took our best people decades to track this damn place down again." She took a breath before droning on without emotion. "When we found a connection in Neal, we were ordered to come here and assess how best to destroy magic. We took readings of the town and we were told that there was a particularly strong magical source of energy - a trigger of some sort - in the library basement. It was too dangerous to get ourselves, so we got you to do it for us. Our people aren't sure how to destroy it, but that's where you were supposed to come in oh so handy."

Regina furrowed her brow softly. "And why? Why destroy magic?" She held up her free hand again. "I don't want to know your personal story, not like this. Cruel I may have been, but making a person spill their soul without being able to stop themselves is no longer something I have the stomach for. And certainly my son wouldn't want me to compel you to do that. No, I want to hear about what the motivations are of the ones for whom you work, dear."

Tamara shrugged monotonously. "We don't discuss our personal motivations. We only know from what we've seen that magic does nothing but corrupt this world. It is a poison, and we will eliminate it at all costs."

Regina sighed as though exhausted. "Again with the dramatics. Really dear, you shouldn't attempt high drama unless you truly have the flair for it." She smirked in fond memory of some of her more spectacular arrivals and exits. She heard Snow groan in consternation and her smile grew wider despite herself. Emma shook her head in a mixture of exasperation and arousal, loving Regina's ability to play up roles, even when her legs were quaking and her breath still coming out a little crooked.

"What now, Regina?" Emma asked with a desperate glance at her mother's side.

Regina grimaced as though she had better things to do, but stalked over to them and waved one hand over Snow's side. Her enemy's blood ceased its flow, the dark red-black stains on Snow's and Emma's clothes now dripping only with over-saturation, not with fresh blood. Snow's eyes widened as a forest green glow flowed from Regina's slightly trembling hand to her midsection, the bullet seeping out of Snow's body like a creature belly-flopping out of a tight crevice and onto the floor, muscles and skin and blood vessels suturing themselves in its wake like fresh vines growing in spring time.

Regina stared up into Snow's eyes cooly when her work was done.

"That was for your daughter and for my son, Snow," she declared sternly, horrified by the notion that Snow might think she had healed her out of a desire to not see her suffer.

Snow inclined her head in a familiar way, one that she had learned from her mother and seen perfected in Regina's seemingly subservient form. "Of course," Snow told her, sounding less like Mary Margaret and more like Snow White than Emma had heard her sound in a long time.

"Thank you," Emma whispered, gently placing her still-bloodied fingertips on Regina's subtly quaking hips.

Regina offered her a painfully thin-lipped smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"If that ex-boyfriend of yours ever planned to be of use to us all, now would be the time," Regina told her in a change of subject that baffled both mother and daughter.

The skin around Emma's eyes tightened slightly as she tried to follow. "Explain?" she asked.

"I'm going to bring Tamara to the hospital and wipe her memory. I'll input fresh ones of a car accident. I'm going to do the same thing to Greg. I'll need time to concoct the proper potion, so the hospital will be a useful place for them to rest safely." She said these things in a hushed whisper, so that Tamara wouldn't hear: the more she heard, the harder it would be for the memory wipe to be effective.

"Rumpel's boy can take them both out of town: it will make sense because he knows Tamara, and Greg and she are acquainted. I don't know that the potion will effectively wipe all magic from their memories - all magic has a price, of course, and one of them is that it marks you fairly permanently - but once they're out of Storybrooke, you and I can place a renewed protection spell around the town to keep them and their people out. It will be stronger than anything Gold can come up with because it will be borne of True Love. And when the town has recovered somewhat, if we choose to investigate them, we can. I believe you have a hereditarily agitating knack for _finding_ people."

Emma grimaced: she knew that by "the town," Regina had meant herself, but wasn't willing to admit her pain and her desperate need for rest. The blonde let it go kindly, along with the crack about her parents.

"Snow dear," Regina began again evenly, a cool detachment hanging in her tone, "are you feeling up to escorting Tamara to the hospital? I assure you - " Regina held up Tamara's heart - "she won't give you any difficulties."

"I'll just take your word for it, then," Snow muttered with a combination of old trauma and good humor. Regina straightened her back fully and looked at Snow imperiously, daring her to repeat her sarcasm.

"Alright, alright. You don't have to go all _Queen_ on me," Snow murmured as she walked over to Tamara and somewhat roughly took her by the crook of her elbow.

Regina merely raised her eyebrows. "Like mother, like daughter," she intoned dryly. Both younger women ignored the quip, not quite knowing what to make of it.

At the doorway, Snow turned around. "What about Hook?" she asked tensely.

Regina raised the hand with Tamara's heart in it in response. "Tamara dear, where is the pirating scumbag?"

"Oh, Regina, now that really is rude," a new voice said from the darkness behind the doorway. Emma barely resisted rolling her eyes as Hook strolled into the room, amused smirk alight on his face.

Emma instinctively cocked her gun.

"No need, Emma," Regina dismissed her, holding up Tamara's heart. "The Captain knows all too well what this magic is capable of, don't you, dear?"

Hook glared fiercely at her. "I need to skin my crocodile, Regina," he told her testily, notably keeping his chest out of arms' reach.

"_Really_?" Emma injected in frustration, adopting the tone she often used for calling Henry out on something she didn't quite believe. "Because Regina just saved my mom's life, and if she could do that, I think you could exist in the same town as Rumpelstiltskin, don't you?"

Hook grinned at her and exhaled a rapid laugh. "No," he told her shortly, but turned his gaze, amused, to Regina. "Gone soft recently, have you, Regina? With mummy dearest gone - "

"Don't. You. _Dare_," Regina advanced on him aggressively, her low voice dangerously throaty. The torture she'd just endured showed plainly in her eyes as her rage blazed. Snow gulped in a wave of guilt behind them.

"No, it's not that, is it, love? This is something else, something - "

He glanced at Emma instinctively and his eyes slowly traced the way her body was poised protectively next to Regina, her face blazing with fire at his unfair blow about her mother, her eyes searching Regina's face to see if she was alright. He combined this rapidly with the fact that she had apparently come to rescue the Queen - indeed, she was no longer being tortured, nor was she dead, which he had been almost certain would be the case once Greg was done with her - and with the way she had caressed Regina's name with her tongue when she'd spoken it moments before. Realization struck him and he almost squealed with delight.

"Oh, Your _Majesty_," he began, his eyes alight and lust dancing in them brightly, "be it on you to woo the Princess daughter of Snow White and dear Prince Charming, then? Marvelous work, love: I take it you're the reason for my failed attempts with her?"

"_You're_ the reason for your failed attempts with me, damnit," Emma protested as Regina seethed and Snow rolled her eyes.

Hook chuckled condescendingly. "But I'm afraid this is all really just distracting us from the most pressing matter at hand. I need that trigger, love. And your magic doesn't frighten me enough to stop me."

And in one swift motion, he whipped out the dwarfs' ax that he had had hidden in his clothing and slammed it onto the diamond that Greg had left on a small table beside Regina. He grinned at their shocked expressions. "Their little stash of data on magic is truly a most informative thing," he bragged. "You see, interpreting maps is easily translatable into interpreting information that seems to be about one thing but are really about - "

"You _fool_!" Regina cut him off as the fail-safe began to glow brightly and hover in front of them, shattering the air around them. "You didn't bother to find out what it does, did you? It will destroy Storybrooke and everyone in it!" Hook took a step back, mouth opened slightly, as he stared at the floating crystal.

"How do we shut it down?" Emma asked tensely as Regina stalked over to Tamara and roughly shoved her heart back into her chest.

"Watch her," she told Snow, who nodded weakly and gripped Tamara's arms behind her back firmly.

Regina turned back towards Emma, eyes ablaze with tears. "This is why I left, Emma. To destroy this." She waited for realization to crash over Emma, and when it did, her heart shattered. Again.

Emma shook her head wildly, tears beginning to stain her voice. "But you said... you said it would take all your strength, and you had your full powers then..."

The older woman nodded as even Hook was shamed into silence.

"You tell Henry everything, Emma Swan," was all she said before she placed her subtly trembling hands above the fail-safe, her body shuddering violently as her head snapped back, beginning to absorb the magic that was pouring out and already beginning to crack through all the walls of Storybrooke.


	8. Chapter 7

_Thank you so much for the encouraging and supportive reviews! Please feel free to keep them coming!_

_The later part of this chapter is very heavy with text messages. I indicate texts with italics, but of course not everything in italics is a text message. Don't fret: you'll know it when you see it._

* * *

Ice was pouring once again through Regina's already weakened body, and all Emma could see was the arch of the fallen Queen's back, tense and unforgiving in agonized pained now, gloried and ecstatic in erotic pleasure just last night.

Emma remembered the fear wracking through the older woman's back the day they first made love, terror that Henry would be lost blazing through her eyes and her body.

_What do you need me to do?_

_Help me._

Emma remembered the first time she saw fear for someone other than Henry shuttle through Regina's eyes, ankle swollen and bruised, as the dizzying scent of burning wood and thick haze of smoke overtook both of their lungs.

_You're going to leave me, aren't you?_

Emma remembered the proud defiance in Regina's eyes and the refusal to acknowledge her utter loss of control and the onslaught of dreaded fear at what such hands could do and had done to her, as Whale reached maliciously for her throat.

_Let her go. Let her go. Let! Her! Go!_

Emma remembered their helplessness in the face of the wraith, bleeding Regina's exquisite body into a shell bereft of the soul that had always loved so deeply that it had fallen into an abyss of self-loathing rage.

_She's not dying._

Emma remembered the terror that had torn through her body when Regina spun and spun Jefferson's hat, time and again without success, the roar of the wraith raging through their ears, and the need she'd had to comfort the woman whom she couldn't admit she couldn't lose; she remembered the look of shocked understanding that had passed between them in that moment, lost until Emma confronted her just yesterday in the bean field.

_Love - _True_ Love - is magic._

Emma remembered the dignity with which the former Mayor had risen from her crumpled place at the base of that tree when Emma and Mary Margaret had climbed out of that well, the cracked voice welcoming her home, the pain she so desperately tried to hide from her son after she absorbed so much magic that could have easily been fatal to her: if she hadn't had such reason to survive.

_She saved you: both of you._

_Welcome back._

Emma remembered the dedication with which Regina had made love to her the night before, the first night during which they acknowledged the nature of their connection, the utter devotion with which the older woman had pleased her, knowing what Emma did not: that it would be their last night together.

_True Love is the only magic that can break through realms. And that's... that's what we did with the hat, isn't it?_

_Indeed it is._

Emma remembered the sheer magnitude of every ounce of agony that had wracked through her body after she dropped her own and Regina's tears into her eye, the minuscule taste of what Regina had endured for terribly longer, body strapped down to the table that burned every cell she had, frying every bit of her being but none of her dedication to why she had gone off alone to face Greg and Tamara.

_I need you to know that you could have been my happily ever after, but protecting Henry - protecting _you_ - is far more important than protecting the happy ending of a woman who has destroyed as much as I have. _

"Emma, go. Tell Henry." Tears glistened in Regina's broken eyes as her knees barely kept her body upright and her arms were scarcely containing her pained trembling. The sound of her voice broke the younger woman out of her shocked memories, and all Emma could feel was terror.

Terror of losing one of the only things that had ever mattered to her.

Terror of living with the regret of not acknowledging it sooner, of having dealt nearly fatal blows to the woman who now - so suddenly having gained everything she'd ever wanted - was so fearful of losing it, as she had lost everything else, that she felt the need to sacrifice herself to ensure that she would at least always have the past twelve hours.

Terror of the look in Henry's eyes.

Terror of realizing that Regina had been right all along: love though their family had, Emma didn't know Henry's favorite lullaby or what comforted and healed him when he was sick or what he was allergic to or that his favorite constellation was Orion or that he had trouble sleeping without a nightlight.

"What am I supposed to tell him, Regina? _What_?" Emma's voice was wet with barely suppressed sobs as she fought one last battle with the woman who had convinced her to find solace in establishing roots somewhere. In someone. In something. A family.

Regina blinked away tears at Emma's distress, her heart shattering but the torment shuttling through her entire body, keeping the explosion in both her heart and in the fail-safe device, contained within her.

"Tell him that in the end, it wasn't too late for me to do the right thing."

Emma all but stomped her foot in frustration, not caring that Hook was watching her lose it with a slightly opened mouth and a curious expression that looked a lot like genuine compassion in his eyes.

"He already _knows_, Regina, he was _happy _to find out that we - "

An upsurge of horror locked her next words in the back of her nearly weeping throat as an extra surge of energy rocked through Regina's body and the older woman closed her eyes in pain.

"_Emma_." Her voice was very nearly broken, and, watching, Snow could tell that a great deal of her agony wasn't coming from the device itself, but from the effort of not screaming out in pain in front of her lover and her sort-of enemies. "I can't sustain this. I need... to put everything else that I... have... into it... to truly diffuse it... _Please_, Emma... Go... I'm not strong enough." Her eyes opened again and she locked them agonizingly with Emma's, begging her for so many things in one glance.

_I'm not strong enough to diffuse this without killing myself._

_I'm not strong enough to watch you watch me die._

_I'm not strong enough to say good bye again._

_I'm not strong enough to let you love me and live with the fear that one day, you'll be gone._

Emma's heart seized and burned as though Greg's electrodes had charred it to death as tears slid freely down her face. She watched in utter torment as a single tear leaked out of Regina's eye.

And then her heart expanded like a helium balloon on Henry's birthday as she remembered their connection: Emma had shared her pain through tears, and it had saved her before. Why couldn't it again?

Her eyes blazed as she stepped forward, a fearful but increasingly confident smile gracing her trembling lips.

"You may not be strong enough. But maybe _we_ are."

Regina's deep brown orbs widened as Emma placed her fingertips within centimeters of her own, not pausing to let the older woman object as she concentrated on taking the life out of the fail-safe so that the life wouldn't continue to pour out of her lover. Her brain caught fire as the pain that went into the Curse - and hence, would have to be released if the Curse were reversed - cascaded lethally through her fingers and up into her every cell. She almost screamed out, but glancing at Regina's reddened and awed eyes and Snow's terrified and unblinking gaze forced her, like Regina, to suffer in silence.

The Queen gazed up at her and smiled softly, the relief and wild pleasure on her face as she felt Emma's magic touching hers briefly resembling her expressions of erotic ecstasy. That is, until her eyes reached Emma's and she realized what torture the younger woman must be experiencing, all the self-loathing, vengeance, and torment that went into the Curse now bleeding into Emma's veins.

"Em, I - I'm sorry," she croaked softly, but to her surprise, the blonde smiled genuinely, looking up from the fail-safe with excitement: she felt its power starting to wane.

"I'm not," Emma told her earnestly, understanding borne of the intensity of their magical connection and intuitive knowledge of each other coursing through her. "Regina, without the Curse, we wouldn't have Henry. We wouldn't have each other. Maybe it can give you your happiness after all."

Regina's lips parted as the pain began to leave her, feeling love instead of agony begin to course through her veins.

_Then love again._

"Emma," she whispered as though she'd never said the name before, but this time, she knew she would again. Because together, they _were _strong enough.

The younger woman grinned through the last remnants of the traumas and manipulations that had created the Curse. "Let go, Regina," she implored softly, feeling the last venom of the fail-safe leaking into her blood and dissolving in the power of their shared connection.

Regina gasped lightly and it resonated powerfully in Emma's core, as it stirred in her memories of other times when she had enticed the other woman into relinquishing her control slightly to open herself to greater pleasure than she'd ever allowed anyone to give her: indeed, than anyone save Daniel had cared to give her.

Vanquished, the fail-safe ceased its ethereal glowing and clinked down harmlessly onto the resting place on which Hook had called forth its destructive power, tinkling like wind chimes on a pleasantly breezy spring morning.

Regina swayed headily on the spot as the sight of the diamond so rapidly descending dizzied her immensely, the last few hours of torture of various stripes billowing through her body relentlessly and with seductive fluidity. Emma's last words to her echoed gently in her ears and rang in her heart as her body crumpled beneath her, unable any longer to withstand the agony of consciousness, even if that agony was now accompanied by joy and relief.

The sheriff planted her feet sturdily beside Regina as the older woman collapsed, somehow gracefully, into Emma's still trembling and still strong arms. Using her bicep as a pillow, Emma cradled Regina's limp and mercifully resting form, coaxing her weary head onto her shoulder as she lifted her, one arm under wilted knees and the other under generally firm back. Without sparing even a passing glance for the table Regina had been tortured upon, or the three pairs of gaping eyes that were watching her with emotions ranging from adoring awe to shock to rage, she carried Regina out of the door of that horrible room, calling over her shoulder to Snow, "Bring that trigger thing and the two idiots with you."

At how very much Emma sounded like Regina in that moment, Snow blanched and Hook shivered with perverse delight. Tamara scowled, refusing to process what she had just seen for the first time: magic being used for _love_.

* * *

"_Charming!"_ Snow called with relief as the odd troupe exited the warehouse to find the former shepherd rushing towards it, Grumpy and Red immediately behind him.

His eyes lit up at seeing her safe, arms wrapping around her happily. His eyes misted over, however, at seeing Regina unconscious in Emma's arms over Snow's shoulder. "Emma, do you want me to - "

"Nope," she answered without his finishing, his arms snapping away abashedly.

"Right," he shrugged, reminding himself that he'd be damned before he let anyone else carry an injured Snow as long as he was capable. It was then that he registered the blood that had stained most of Snow's clothing and much of Emma's, and his heart faltered.

"Regina saved me," Snow explained before he could ask, keeping her hands firmly on his upper arms as he processed the information.

Grumpy took Tamara by the elbow after unleashing a deadly glare upon Hook, and directed her back to the pick-up, ax held threateningly in his other hand as the rest heard him muttering something to her about joining her friend in the hospital, hurting Snow, and how sharp a dwarfs' blade is.

"Easy, Leroy," Snow called. "We just have get to the hospital: the rest will join you, wait." She turned 'round to face her daughter. "Emma, I - "

But Emma had blocked out everything and everyone, heading straight for the squad car that Ruby had arrived in. Snow glanced at her best friend, unsure. Ruby squeezed her shoulder gently and took off after Emma, the false red-head's face still pale at the sight and scent of Snow's blood.

"I thought you were watching the kid," Emma grunted at her as Ruby rushed to open the back door for her.

"I was, but David called and asked me to leave him alone with Archie. He said he might need me."

Emma nodded absently as she bent down to lay Regina in the backseat gently. She smoothed her hair out of her face tenderly before looking up at Ruby.

"So, Regina was gonna make a potion to make Greg and Tamara forget as much about magic as possible, and then Neal's gonna take them out of town. Can you get Mother Superior to do it? I want them outta here as soon as possible. And then Regina and I are going to put a protection spell around the town to keep out other unwanted visitors. Ok?"

Red grinned mischievously. "I was your Deputy for a day," she reminded her, recalling the last time the two friends had worked together in a 'protecting the town' capacity with a laugh, noting how different Ruby and Red were, and how amazing it felt to have them both integrated into her being now.

Emma returned her grin, Ruby's automatic acceptance of her protectiveness of the Queen lightening her heart immensely. "Yeah, you were."

Ruby gave a cock-eyed salute before jogging back over to Snow, David, Tamara, and Hook. "Take care of your woman, Ems. I'll take care of everything else."

"_Hey!_" Emma called in mock offense after her, but Ruby paused only to throw a wink over her shoulder. Emma chuckled as she opened the door to the driver's seat.

"Oh no," she heard behind her. "You are _not _driving that car with all that magic still coursing through you, young lady."

Emma groaned internally. "You choose _now_ to go all "Mom" on me? _Really?_" she whined.

She turned to see nothing but Snow's raised eyebrows and hands on her hips. Emma gulped slightly, unused to anyone interacting with her in reprimanding parent mode.

"Sit in the back seat with _your woman_, as Ruby seems so delighted to be saying," Snow grimaced, nodding her head towards the back door and giving Emma a plausible excuse for obedience.

She slipped without another word into the back seat, tenderly lifting Regina's head to rest on her lap, settling one hand in her hair and one hand on her hip.

It oddly gave Emma a feeling that was deeply reminiscent of what she'd felt the first time she'd gotten into Regina's car, with Henry sprawled across her lap after his long day in the mine, and this time, she allowed herself to acknowledge what she'd forbidden herself then: _family_.

Tears welled in Emma's eyes as she stared down at the unconscious woman, and Snow eyed her keenly in the rear view mirror as she slid the key neatly into the ignition.

"She's going to be ok, Emma," she told her softly, as though she was almost afraid that her daughter would take the words of comfort as some sort of attack: she'd always seemed to in the past, anyway.

The blonde swallowed. "Why are you ok with this? This is... _Regina_."

Snow sighed as she lifted a solemn hand to wave see you later to Charming and Ruby as she pulled away. "I know very well who it is, Emma. And I'm not sure yet how okay with it I am. But I am sure that love is more complicated than... your father and I weren't supposed to fall in love, and Regina wasn't even supposed to register Daniel's existence as a full person. I know it may not seem this way, and I know there's a lot to talk about, but I also know quite a bit about loves you're not supposed to have."

Emma nodded silently, wondering if part of the reason Snow was so calm right now was because these were the kinds of conversations she'd longed for, the kinds of talks she'd yearned to have with her daughter since immediately after the Curse broke.

_I know we _have _talked... _

Anything - any_one_ - that could create those conversations must be alright, at least for the time being. At least, until Snow had distance from the situation and started to ask herself what Regina's long-term intentions were towards Emma, and vice versa. At least, until Regina's unconscious form wasn't evoking lifetimes worth of guilt and empathy for the woman whom Snow had known before the older woman had taken her first heart.

Regina stirred then, but not in the restful, groggy sort of way. Her scorched fingers twitched first, as though flinching away from Greg's hold, and her neck started tossing her head relentlessly from side to side. She moaned tormentedly in her sleep and her lower back tensed painfully. Emma's hands immediately went to work, soothing Regina's hair and running up and down her side softly, as she bent down to whisper sweet comforts into the brunette's ear.

"You're safe now, Regina; no one's going to hurt you. I've got you, baby," she found herself telling the unconscious Queen. To her mild surprise, the older woman's body relaxed at the sound of her voice. The former mayor turned her face towards Emma's stomach, unknowingly seeking the warmth she found there. Emma smiled through the mist in her eyes.

Snow was staring at Emma in her mirror, her own flavor of tears coloring her vision. "There will be nightmares for a long time, Emma. There probably already were before... this." There was a bitterness in her voice, a self-loathing, that Emma had become accustomed to in her mother lately, but was oddly comfortable with. It made her more of a person, an accessible parent, rather than a mythical fairy tale piece of perfection.

They pulled up to Regina's mansion silently, Emma immensely grateful that her mother had understood her need to take care of Regina in a place the older woman was familiar with, in a place where they could be alone. Except for Henry, when the time came.

Snow slipped out of the car but stood motionlessly at the door as Emma somehow seamlessly pulled Regina out of the back seat and swept her yet again into her arms.

Snow pulled Emma close from the side, trying not to disturb Regina's unconscious form. "I love you, Emma." It was a whisper, but it filled Emma's heart as though it had been the most magnificent pronouncement in the world. And perhaps, except for when those words escaped Regina's lips, it had been: to have her mother's love still after she knew her daughter wasn't straight, still after she knew she loved the woman who'd spent most of her life trying to kill her... it was almost more than Emma could bear. Almost.

She smiled softly and nodded, throat too tight to respond with words.

"Call if you need... anything," Snow told her as Emma set up the walk to Regina's house, magicking the door open with an effortlessness that shocked both mother and daughter.

Biceps burning with the unconscious weight of the older woman, Emma gently set her down on her bed in that beautiful room upstairs which Emma had never really gotten the chance to take in without having to leave soon. She slid off Regina's heels and brought the blanket up over her exhausted body, smoothing her hair away from her burnt temples before looking around the majestic room, taking in the vanilla apple scent; the well-worn Gregory MacGuire novel by the bedside; the photographs of Henry (and, occasionally, Henry and Regina) meticulously arranged throughout the room, so that wherever she turned, she would see his beaming face of various ages; and the old pieces of art he had made her in school, the macaroni and stick-figure crafts oddly complimenting the pristine maturity - or, perhaps, forced loss of childhood - that characterized the rest of the room.

And so began Emma's long task of waiting for her lover to awaken from her body's breakdown, the sleep she hadn't expected to recover from, after enduring hours of torture at the hands of another and at the hands of her own past.

* * *

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Red," the Blue Fairy was saying in the waiting room in the hospital. "I have never taken orders from Queen Regina, and I certainly don't intend to begin when she tells me to refuse to bring to justice people who just tried to destroy our very town."

Ruby glanced left and right, infuriated, hoping her eyes would catch on to something that would help soothe her building anger. She'd spent too long fighting for Snow's True Love to deny it to the woman who would have been her goddaughter but instead had become one of her best friends. And denying Emma her True Love, right now, would be letting Blue stand - or hover, or whatever - between Regina and her wishes to exercise some compassion for someone who'd hurt her, for once. For Henry. For Emma. For herself.

"_Regina _is the one Greg tortured for hours, Blue, so she's the only one with any right to tell us what to do with him, and she says wipe both their memories and get them out of town. And that's that. You want to confirm it with Snow and Charming, go ahead, but they trust me in a way you never have, and I'm telling you they're going to back me up."

Blue tilted her head upwards as Red referred to her lack of trust in the werewolf. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Ruby."

The younger woman exhaled heavily, exasperated but tired of fighting. "Listen, just... just get the potions together, ok? If not for Regina, then for Emma."

"_Emma_?" Red flinched internally as Blue looked utterly perplexed. "What does the princess have to do with this?"

"Everything," Ruby intoned with meaning as she jogged off to catch up with Whale, who was walking swiftly out of the surgical bay.

"He'll be just fine," the doctor told her before she could ask. "Still sleeping off the anesthetic. Emma unloaded a couple more bullets than necessary into him: what the hell happened in there, Ruby?"

The werewolf grinned enigmatically at the scientist most thought mad. He furrowed his brow. "And where is Emma, anyway?"

Ruby's smile only increased. "Tending to the Queen," she said, teetering giddily on her toes before rushing off, restoring her serious mode, to ensure that Snow and Charming set Mother Superior right about giving Greg and Tamara a memory potion.

* * *

Six long hours passed during which Regina did not move a muscle - save for when nightmares wracked her body - in her sleep. Emma soothed her fears each time, never leaving the stool she'd pulled from Henry's room to Regina's bedside except, in a rushed and harried way, to use the bathroom, get Snow's blood off of her hands, and change her bloodied sweater.

She found herself wearing the light blue collared shirt that Regina had taken from Emma's room during one of their particularly erotic liaisons, in which Emma had torn the buttons off of the blouse Regina began the evening wearing. The light blue memory was hanging in a prominent place in Regina's closet and was thus easiest to grab, and Emma found herself wondering if the clothes Emma had worn - Regina's black sweater, Emma's red turtleneck, Regina's silken, deep blue shirt - were most easily accessible because Regina had missed her when she was in the Enchanted Forest and dealing with her mother alone.

Emma never pegged herself for someone with a long attention span, but the hours passed unexpectedly quickly for her. She simply found herself staring at Regina, unable to look enough at the now relaxed face of the woman she loved and almost lost. Several hours into her vigil, texts started pouring in from her son and the rest of her family: she imagined that, after all that had happened that day, they were having difficulty being patient and waiting for Emma and Regina to emerge from their rest and temporary exile inside 108 Mifflin Street.

_Emma, Archie said Ruby called and told him everything's fine again. But why isn't Mom picking up her phone? Can I come over and see you and Mom? Where are you guys? Archie said it's better if I hear what happened today from you and Mom. Can you tell me? Please? _

Emma smirked and shook her head at the boy's precociousness, trying desperately not to weep over his concern which very nearly became a reality. Trying desperately not to remember how hopelessly close his anxieties came to being a reality, how close they both came to losing Regina. She joked at him, her best defense.

_Chill with the 20 questions, kid. Everything's cool as cucumbers. Relax and read some Tron with Archie. Ur mom and i will c u soon._

An immediate response: like Regina, Henry immediately saw through her facade.

_But that's not an answer, and I want to see you both now!_

Her heart quaked at his simplicity, his belief that if he could just see them, everything and everyone would be better, whole, including Regina. She wondered morosely if the need to see something in order to believe it was genetic. She hoped with all the strife in his life lately, he wouldn't become quite as grounded as Emma had in the earlier years of her life. But maybe it was a balance: she was learning to believe on faith, and he was learning to trust what's right in front of him. Like, for example, the fact that Regina loves him.

_I know, Henry. I'm sorry. Pls be patient. I love you. So does your mom._

She flinched as his response came through almost immediately.

_That makes it sound like something's wrong! What are you not telling me? No more lying, remember? And why don't you just call me?_

He was definitely Regina's child, just as sharp and observant. And protective. Insightful. She mentally smacked herself for being unable to hide her own worry from him: Regina was really much better at communicating with him, in that way that she had. Like always bending down to speak to him face-to-face.

_Bc ur mom's sleeping and i don't wanna wake her. And i'm not lying - ur mom will want to tell u what happened herself, so we'll explain everything when she is rested up. I promise._

Satisfied with her answer and the slowed onslaught of his responses - she knew he was both a logical and considerate child, and her explanation about Regina needing rest and reassurance about timing seemed to quench his thirst to know for now - she idly twirled her phone in her hand for a few moments. She grimaced, staring hard at Regina's sleeping form. Her heart wrenched at the horror she knew would shadow Henry's face when he found out what happened. A sudden thought occurred to her. She flipped her phone back open.

_Archie, thx for taking care of Henry. Regina got tortured really badly, and he's gonna need to be ready to cope with that. Can u prepare him a little bit, pls? Don't tell him 2 much: Regina's gonna want 2 explain it herself._

Her eyes burned wildly as she typed and her heart thudded as she waited for his response, knowing Henry was probably pestering him, intuiting - as the clever kid would - that it was Emma who'd texted his friend and therapist.

_Of course, Emma. Please don't worry too much about Henry: he's a resilient child, and we'll help him get through this. And what about you? I know you're taking care of Regina, but are you taking care of yourself?_

Emma tried to remind herself how much she loved Archie - because she truly did - and suppress her eye roll. She typed with a near franticness that even and especially Henry would see right through. She wasn't sure if she believed it would work on Archie, but she realized with a gut-clenching sensation that she half-hoped it wouldn't, and that he would push her.

_I'm not the one who got electrocuted over and over. I'm fine. Regina's the one 2 worry about._

And push her, he did.

_Regina's strong, Emma. You and Henry will help her recover. In the meantime, it's okay to acknowledge that watching someone we love suffer is its own form of torture: it's alright if you're not okay. It is not a weakness. _

A tear leaked out of Emma's eye as she felt for Regina's note in her back pocket. The note containing her love and her good bye. Dulled panic swept through Emma as she forced herself to remember that it would all be okay: Regina was just unconscious, she'd simply passed out, and everything would be alright now. Regina was safe. The good byes had been premature. They'd spend many more nights in this bed together. And on Saturday mornings, Henry could crawl into bed with them and maybe they could convince Regina to bring a TV - just temporarily - into the room so they could all watch cartoons together. That was Emma's fantasy, anyway, one that she might as well get used to acknowledging instead of suppressing like it was a terrifying phantom. Because now, maybe, it could be reality. If Regina didn't kill her for rescuing her.

Wait a second, had Archie just said...

_Hold up, insect boy, what do u mean someone we love?_

A minute's hesitation on Archie's part, and she imagined - accurately - his chuckle and glance at Henry. And then:

_Forgive me, Emma, but the connection between you and Regina has never quite been a... secret. And Ruby texted me a few minutes ago, saying something about you carrying her out of the warehouse bridal style...? Not to mention the fact that Henry won't stop talking about how the two of you are dating now... Are congratulations in order? ;)_

Emma smirked, her panic dissipating somewhat, enjoying to a degree that at once shocked and soothed her the extent of his understanding and the acceptance in his humor. She stared down at Regina after grinning brightly at her phone, and her head tilted thoughtfully, wondering about the storm that would befall from that woman's lips and - possibly - hands when she found out that basically the entire town now knew, or thought they knew, that they were together. _At least we told Henry first_, she thought wryly.

As though her mother could read her mind - and sometimes, when Mary Margaret gave her just _that _look, she thought she actually could - a new text buzzed through.

_How are you, honey? And how is your... are you actually dating now, or are you still refusing to acknowledge what obviously exists between you?_

Emma gave a dry chuckle, grateful that Henry hadn't told her parents yet, but nervously looking down at Regina and wondering what fury would escape the woman's body if she knew this conversation was happening. With Emma sitting practically on her bed, no less. She knew immediately that she would show Regina the conversation: Snow had interfered in Regina's love life once before, and no one needed to repeat that history. Making everything transparent was the only way. She grimaced and typed out her nervous response.

_Hello to u 2, lady that my girlfriend just saved. How's ur gun shot wound? _

She accurately imagined Snow's motherly eye roll and grinned: the least she could do for Regina - who had been willing to sacrifice her life for a town that had wanted her dead, and who saved her mother's life after she'd been shot, and to whom there'd be hell to pay otherwise anyway - was give Snow a hard time. _Isn't that what daughters do?_ she asked herself.

_Very funny, Emma. My side is perfectly fine now, as you well know. Now answer your mother's questions: how are you? How is Regina? Are you two officially an item?_

Emma laughed out loud, and shoved her wrist in her mouth when she saw Regina's eyelids flutter at the sound. She raised her eyebrows and bit down on her own skin to stifle her laughter as two new texts came through.

_Emma, I'm watching your mother's blood pressure rise by the second. Try to go easy on her with the Regina thing, ok?_

_Omg Ems, Snow's bright red. So's David: I think he just txted u 2. Wtvr ur doing, keep it up: this is grt!_

It was quite a few moments before Emma could remove her wrist from her mouth and type out her responses. She sent the first to both her parents, and the second to Ruby.

_I'm fine. Regina's sleeping. We told Henry last night that we're dating. This isn't how we were planning to tell u guys but I guess now you no. And I think u shud get Henry from Archie soon maybe go 2 dinner w them. Henry's anxious 2 c Regina but I told him she needs rest. He doesn't no wut happened yet n WE want to tell him._

_Lol Rubes, don't u have anything better to do than creep on me n my parents?_

The response from Mary Margaret, ever an elementary school teacher, was almost immediate.

_I'm glad you're ok sweetie. But please use real words next time you text me a long message: David and Ruby had to translate for me._

David's was next.

_Thanks, Emma. Your mother is breathing better now. We'll take Henry out, no problem. You just take care of yourself and Regina._

And Ruby's.

_ur no fun, u shud of strung em out longer._

Emma rolled her eyes affectionately before doing a double take at Regina. Her cobwebbed brown eyes had opened hazily and she was staring at Emma as though she were about to vanish through thick and dimly painful rain and Regina had to memorize her face before it was gone forever.

"Something amusing you, Ms. Swan?" Her voice was full of gravel again and her eyes were ever so slightly unfocused. Emma ignored her poor attempt at levity, her heart soaring in relief to see those eyes open and to hear that voice, no matter how strained it might be for now.

"Hey," she responded with a softness Regina had only learned to associate with the brash sheriff when she started sleeping with her. Emma tossed her phone carelessly onto the other side of the bed as she shifted onto the bed and leaned closer to the older woman. "How are you feeling?"

Regina blinked slowly, having trouble focusing on Emma's new position. Emma moved back slightly and the skin around the Queen's eyes seemed somehow less tight. The closeness had been dizzying, and she was grateful that Emma immediately understood.

"You didn't listen to me," she told her evenly, and even in Regina's weakened state, Emma knew her well enough to be nervous. She wondered wildly how David had mastered the art of dealing with intensity of Snow's passion, and if she would ever learn how to do the same with Regina. The optimistic part of her - sounding like an odd combination of Henry and Archie - told her she already had.

"Like I said, do I ever?" She hoped that her humor wouldn't enrage Regina too much while she stalled to come up with an explanation that didn't reduce her to a waterfall of tears and blubbering that involved a lot of ripping open scars about how she couldn't bear to lose the woman she loved.

Regina closed her eyes and shook her head, but there was anger rather than amusement in the motion. Her brown orbs were full of fire when she opened them again.

"This isn't a _joke_, Ms. - Emma. You had no right to - to - _rescue_ me. I told you very specifically that I didn't want to be _saved_."

Emma's heart plummeted along with her stomach as she found herself unable to meet the eyes of the woman she'd found it so easy to go head-to-head with for so long. No more. Shame boiled her insides and she realized that maybe Regina _needed _the honesty that would accompany her waterfall of tears.

"I know you did, Regina, and I'm sorry. I am." She chanced a quick glance at the older woman, who had raised herself slightly on her elbows and was gazing at her intently. She looked down again and continued, addressing her hands.

"I know I had no right to decide for you whether you lived or died, when you told me so explicitly what you wanted. Maybe it was selfish of me to come rescue you. But I just..." Her hollow voice cracked as she saw Regina's burnt finger in her peripheral vision and lost all desire to be composed, to be collected, to be disconnected. To be safe. Regina had put it all on the line for her, and damnit, the least she deserved was the same. She carried on in a voice that was nothing if not broken, and nothing if not brave. As Regina had been in setting out to save the town alone. As they would both have to be to deal with the repercussions of letting each other in so deeply.

"...I just couldn't _lose _you, Regina, not when we have so much left to _do_ together! Henry hasn't even had his first date yet, or his first day of high school, or thrown up from too much alcohol for the first time, or published his first story book! We haven't had a picnic together and we haven't had sex on the beach, and I've never held your hand while it snows and taken the first steps in fresh snow together or had a snowball fight with you and Henry. We never looked at the stars together, and we've never even taken a stupid picture together, and we never got to sign Christmas cards together or do things other than fight that all my life, I've watched other families do. And damnit, Regina, if _anyone's_ my family, it's you and it's Henry, because biology can go to hell, you're his mother even more than I am and I wasn't about to lose you and let him lose you, too. And I _love_ you, and I can't _live_ without you, I don't _want _to, and I just couldn't handle thinking that you - "

Her voice had long since risen high above it's usual octave and she had long since stopped caring about her dignity. And Regina had long since lifted her elbows off the bed and slid her ass up so she could sit without bracing herself, but Emma in her tears hadn't noticed. So it surprised her more than anything else would have at that moment to feel Regina's soft lips interrupting her monologue, tenderly searing into her entire body as Regina captured Emma's mouth with her own, cutting off her speech but breathing in new life as she took the crying woman's face into her hands and kissed her like she'd never get another chance. Even though she knew now, mercifully, that she would.

She brushed her way up Emma's jawline and kissed each tear streak off of her reddened cheeks as Emma breathed in the heady scent of Regina's sweat and exhaustion, which smelled, somehow, like a rainstorm on a field of young grass. A shudder of relief ran through the blonde's body to feel Regina's hands on her, hands that had looked so limp for so long, hands that had gone from shuddering and burning to dying to ripping out someone else's heart to absorbing a would-be lethal dose of magic and torment to laying limp for hours to, now, caressing Emma's face and hair as though it had been her sole wish for years. And, indeed, it probably had been, somehow.

When the older woman drew her face away, however, there was a gravity in her eyes that brought the tears back to Emma's. But tenderness and an openness that Emma had previously thought Regina could only address Henry with characterized her voice when she explained herself.

"I think I understand, Emma. I was only drawn to magic because I thought it could..." Her cobwebbed voice faltered, and Emma reached up to touch one of her hands - which was still on her face - in support. "I thought it could bring Daniel back. I would have given anything not to have lost him, and I did things he never would have wanted me to in his name, so I..." Regret cascaded through the older woman, who desperately sought - and found - grounding in her lover's forest eyes. She forced herself onward. As she always did. "I understand." She took a deep breath before the next bit, and Emma felt a storm approaching. She was relieved that Regina hadn't pulled away from her. Yet.

"But Emma, I have had no shortage of people in my life who have done nothing but rip all of my control from me at all times. Your grandfather, for instance." She frowned. "And Henry's." She paused, and Emma knew she was thinking of Cora, but she remained silent, knowing Regina wasn't ready to speak ill of her. She waited, her heart a knot. "I need you to not be one of those people, Emma. I understand, I do, why you came to rescue me, but I need to know that I can trust you to respect my own choices."

Emma nodded, but her face was clouded. "Even if your choice is to die?" She surprised herself with the thickness of her voice, knowing how much like Henry she must sound. But she stuck to her question resolutely.

Regina kissed her lightly on the mouth. "Yes, my love." She looked at Emma's foggy eyes for a long moment. "But I don't think that will be my choice for quite some time. Greg did do us one favor." Emma didn't miss the shudder than ran through Regina's body when she said his name, and she renewed her grip on Regina's hand. The older woman grimaced her thanks for the acknowledgment.

"When I was on that table..." Another involuntary shudder. "I was so terrified that you and Henry would be killed by their idiocy. That's all I was focused on: figuring out some way to make things safe for you before I died. But I think I realized when you rescued me just how much pain you two would have been in if I _had _died."

Emma frowned. "Sounds like you have _me _to thank for that, not... _him_." She was testing Regina's waters, she knew, but she also knew that Regina was grounded by her humor, inappropriate as it was.

"Indeed," the brunette murmured, finally letting herself lay back and rest her aching back.

Emma hadn't thought of what to say next when her phone buzzed. Regina nodded at it vaguely and Emma glanced down at it from across the bed. She reached over for it, telling Regina apologetically, "Henry."

Regina nodded, satisfied, as Emma read his message quickly.

_Is Mom awake yet? It's been hours. David said we're going to go for dinner. Can you and Mom come? Is she up for it? No pressure, but I miss you both._

She grimaced at Regina. "He wants to know if we wanna have dinner at Granny's with everyone, but I'll just tell him you're still rest - "

"Nonsense, darling," Regina smiled, and it was infectious because it was one of the most genuine things Emma had ever seen in her life. "Tell our son we'll meet him in an hour: the bug may come, but I'd like to leave your parents out of it for now, if that's alright with you."

Emma just grinned from ear to ear as she typed out a response to Henry. She didn't think it was wise for Regina to be up and about so soon, but at least she wasn't offering to cook Henry a three-course meal herself. And there was plenty of time to rest and recover together. Their whole lives, perhaps.

* * *

_I'm pretty sure this will be the second-to-last chapter of this fic. The next/last chapter will wrap up strings and feature some highly emotional Henry-Regina moments and highly charged love making, not to mention a quite frankly (and hopefully) hilarious conversation between Swan Queen and Snowing about nothing other than sex. Here's hoping you're enjoying the ride!_


	9. Chapter 8

_Alright-y folks, this is the last chapter of this fic. I so hope you've enjoyed the ride! Thanks for all the encouragement and support in your reviews! :)_

_And __**spyffy**__, you told me I should sneak the line "they were totally banging" into this, so that's just what I did! I hope you approve!_

* * *

Watching the generally so dignified woman try and fail to get out of bed may normally have been amusing, but there was no humor in Emma's heart as she stood awkwardly by the foot of the bed as Regina painstakingly swung her legs over the side and tried to stand. After two failed attempts during which her face had reddened deeply and she hadn't even glanced the blonde's way, Emma ventured softly: "Do you want to not go tonight, Regina? It's okay, Henry will understand."

To her surprise, Regina merely sighed and glanced Emma's way, eyes red and defeated. "I'm perfectly capable of attending dinner with our son, dear, I just need to..." She looked down at the floor as though she were on the precipice of a high cliff and her task was to find even footing on the impossible way down. Emma nodded and stepped in front of her softly.

"And what if I sweep you off your feet, not because you need it, but because I want to spoil you as a Queen should be spoiled?"

A touched smile graced Regina's lips as her eyes flooded with tears again at Emma's insight and sweetness. She inclined her head regally. "That would be acceptable, Sheriff Swan," she intoned lightly, gratefully taking Emma's hands into her own and using the blonde's strength to pull herself up and out of their bed.

She clutched onto Emma for a few extra moments, her head rushing unpleasantly at the sudden change of position, and her brow furrowed. "You're not in pain yourself, Emma? The fail-safe device was no picnic."

Emma shrugged. "It wasn't, but I didn't go through everything you did." Regina nodded quietly, beginning to take small steps toward her closet to pick a fresh outfit.

"How are we, uh... How are we gonna explain things to Henry?" Emma asked Regina's silent form. The brunette sighed deeply, stabilizing herself with the closet door as she picked out a blue dress with soft, forgiving material.

"We certainly can't lie to him about what happened: he'll hear about it elsewhere, somehow, and he'll only come to resent us for lying. But if the information comes from me first, perhaps it will be somewhat less... traumatizing for him. After all, I'm here to tell the tale, aren't I?"

Emma nodded, collapsing backward onto the bed. Regina smiled as she walked over, her steps only slightly more stable than they had been a minute ago. "You look delicious like that, dear, but I'm afraid I'm going to require your assistance if we want to meet Henry on time."

The blonde sat up immediately, awed and proud that Regina was asking for help. "Sure, uh... whaddoyou need?"

"Standing up is..." Regina inclined her head to one side. "Somewhat dizzying. But I do believe I need to shower. If you'd be so inclined as to ensure I don't fall and split my head open before seeing my son..."

Emma was up like a shot, a goofy grin on her face, the degree to which she was deeply moved by being able to help Regina so intimately hidden underneath her excitement at being able to shower with the woman. Regina arched an eyebrow and Emma blushed, knowing that the older woman was grateful Emma wasn't treating this too heavily: to do so would make it feel more like Regina was being dependent, rather than that she was doing something with the blonde that the younger woman could enjoy. Emma instinctively understood this and stripped naked unabashedly, knowing her vulnerability would make Regina feel less exposed and weak for asking for help.

"Come," she said, guiding Regina gently into the bathroom. "Some warm water will do you good." She kissed her along the jawline before bending over to start the shower, Regina's eyes, dizzy though she was, looking over Emma's bare ass approvingly.

There were tears in the blonde's eyes when she turned back around and began helping Regina slide her shirt off of her body, which was too sore to bend her arms in the ways she needed to remove it herself. Regina's breathing was staggered now as her fists clenched at needing the blonde's assistance with something so simple. Emma looked up into her eyes as she reached behind her to unhook her bra, an action she'd performed countless times, but never like this, never because the brunette was incapable of doing it herself. A single tear leaked out of one of Regina's eyes and Emma easily blinked out one of her own, being an expert in holding back tears but knowing the brunette would find this whole exercise easier if Emma gave her back every vulnerability she was giving.

Regina clung to Emma's shoulders for balance frustratedly as the blonde bent to help her off with her slacks and panties, the younger woman betraying no signs of wanting to touch Regina in ways she wasn't ready to experience again. The former mayor's heart swelled gratefully, not recalling anyone save this woman and Daniel who had always so instinctively known the proper and changing balance between emotional intimacy, physicality, and sometimes humor that Regina needed at various times.

Emma's eyes raked Regina's newly naked body softly, pupils dilating uncontrollably with tender and overwhelming desire. She did nothing, however, but very softly kiss the burn marks on both of Regina's fingers. She stepped back then and felt the water, eyes not leaving Regina's orbs of melting chocolate.

"It's warm, but the warmth is gonna sting your burns a bit. Is that okay?"

The older woman nodded hesitatingly as Emma helped her step over the ledge that led into Regina's tub and shower. Emma's core caught fire as she watched water slick down Regina's hair and run down every curve and crevice that Emma had such powerful memories of exploring. The temperature change brought Regina's nipples to a taut state, and Emma licked her lips unconsciously as her eyes followed a drop of water down from Regina's exquisite jawline, collarbone, between the curves of her breasts, her navel, and finally down the inside of her thigh and her toned calf to her ankle, there to join its fellows in the pool around Regina's feet.

Her eyes traveled back up to see Regina staring at her expectantly, looking for all the world as she had when she'd first become Queen: unsure, overwhelmingly young, idealistic, and deeply, deeply pained. Emma's heart contracted in her chest to see that kind of vulnerability in the older woman.

"You are so breathtakingly beautiful," she croaked, and she hoped that - even though she wasn't standing under the shower head - Regina wouldn't mistake the water streaks on her face for anything but what they were: awed and grateful tears.

Regina smiled softly and swayed on the spot. Emma's hands went immediately to her waist, and she steadied. Emma kissed the tip of her nose and was treated to a mouthful of water in response. Regina giggled and Emma's entire spirit marveled at the sound. She decided she wanted to hear that sound - like lilacs dancing in the sunlight - every day for the rest of her life.

"Ready for soaping?" Regina nodded silently, her eyes blazing over Emma's body as the younger woman lathered Regina's body wash into her hands. Their eyes met through a sheet of shower water and Emma's breath hitched at the intensity she found in Regina's gaze. Her hands hesitated, unsure how to interpret the strength of her stare.

"Touch me, Emma. Please." Her voice was small and if Emma hadn't watched her mouth move, she wouldn't have been sure she said it. Obedient, Emma's hands caressed Regina's arms, their eyes not moving from each other and their breath both slowing and syncing. Feather-light so as not to hurt the brunette's skin - which had really taken more than enough of a beating for a lifetime - Emma traced the tired muscles in her arms, tenderly covering the vulnerability of her forearm's veins and her inner elbow with her palms before sliding up to her upper arms and shoulders, working the lather into the older woman's skin with an intimacy neither of them had ever experienced. Slipping under her arms, Emma ran soap everywhere on Regina's body, taking special care on her sore neck, back, and thighs, which had tensed the most during her torture. Tears mingled with shower water on Regina's face as Emma knelt before her, blonde hair becoming dark with wet as she kissed her right under her navel, head resting on her stomach for a moment, overwhelmed by what Regina was allowing her to do.

A soft moan escaped Regina's lips as the younger woman asked with her eyes if she could truly wash her everywhere, and Emma waited for more explicit permission before continuing, lathering soap into and between dense, dark curls as Regina's hands fluttered into Emma's hair as they did every time Emma found herself between her legs. But Emma touched no longer than was necessary to soap and rinse, and Regina asked for nothing more, both women intuitively understanding that there would be plenty of time for a sexual reunion, and now was not that time. Now was for something else entirely, something no more and no less, but simply different.

Running her hands through Regina's hair with shampoo and, then, with conditioner was like nothing Emma had ever experienced, watching the brunette tilt her head back in complete trust as Emma took special care to work in the conditioner as gently as she could, knowing what agonies had blazed through her lover's head hours before.

Bathing products all rinsed away, Emma hesitated. "Why don't you go out and wait for me: I'll help you get dressed. I don't want you to stand up if you don't need to." To her surprise, Regina consented immediately, taking Emma's hands as the blonde helped her over the ledge again and wrapped her tenderly in her bathrobe, helping her put her hair up in a towel, and bringing her to sit on the closed toilet to wait for Emma to finish her own shower. Knowing Regina would need to see her to keep away the panic at having just been so exposed, Emma kept the shower door somewhat open. An expert at taking rushed showers, Emma washed as quickly as she could, enjoying the sensation of washing away the grime from that damned room and the last remnants of Greg's and her mother's blood that had colored parts of her skin red.

She opened the door completely after only a few minutes, reaching for her own towel. "Hey," she offered brightly to her lover.

Regina frowned. Emma shrugged. "Whatever, I'm a fast shower-taker. I'll bet you usually take three hours in there, huh?"

The Queen smirked condescendingly. "Yes, and which one of us actually looks presentable each day, Emma dear?"

"Yeah yeah, whatever you say, Your Worshipfulness. Just gimme that damned blow drier so we can dry your perfect hair and have dinner with the kid. I'm starved."

Regina laughed, a full, deep laugh that hurt her sore body, but she found herself unable to care. If today was an emotional and physical agony fest that would take her years to recover from, if indeed she ever did, tonight might just be shaping itself into the most intimately vulnerable and intimately fulfilling night of her life.

* * *

After Emma blow dried it for her, Regina had insisted on doing her own hair and make-up, and having finished her own getting-ready routine many minutes ago, Emma found herself sitting on Regina's bed, watching her work at her vanity, mesmerized. Regina caught her gaping in her mirror as she put on her mascara and smirked.

"I can see you, you know, darling," she told her off-handedly.

"I know, and I also know that you love that I'm watching you like this." Regina cocked an eyebrow in affirmation, and Emma smiled deeply. "I've always wanted to see you do this, you know."

"Getting domestic already, are we, dear?" Regina asked, her question cool but her tone betraying her happiness.

"I'd love to build a home with you, yeah," Emma answered earnestly. Her heart thudded harder than usual in her chest as she watched Regina's hand falter. They locked eyes in the mirror as all the teasing banter evaporated into the earnestness of Emma's response.

Regina's not-yet-painted and perfectly beautiful lips parted slightly. "Well, Henry _did_ say he'd like it if we moved in together. And I would..." She lowered her hand and turned to face Emma. "I would love to build a home with you too, Emma."

Regina decided she wanted to make Emma smile like that every day for the rest of her life as the blonde radiated joy. Her phone buzzed.

"Hey kid!" Regina smiled widely, excited, and turned back to the vanity to finish her mascara and put on her lipstick. She'd insisted on killer heels against Emma's advice, and she took a deep breath looking into her own eyes in the mirror, relishing the sound of Emma's voice talking to their son behind her. She resolved that she could ignore the pain for him, for tonight. Seeing him was more important than anything. And the pain would pass, in time. It already was: the shower had helped much more than she'd expected it to, and Emma was being... well, perfect. She was roused from her internal pep rally by the blonde's smiling face appearing in the mirror next to hers.

"Henry's ready, gorgeous, they're just a block or so away. You sure you're alright for this?"

Regina smiled and stood, using only one of her hands to brace herself against Emma.

"Let's go have dinner with our son," she said conclusively.

Getting down the stairs was a chore, but they did it together, so they did it successfully. Regina glanced at herself one last time in the mirror in the hallway before opening the front door. She'd hidden the burn marks around her temples reasonably well with a combination of hair style and makeup. She nodded at her reflection, and Emma touched her waist in support. They opened the door.

"_Mom!_" The impassioned shout made Regina's heart somersault in ways it hadn't in years as she stepped shakily outside of her mansion in the falling dusk to see her son running towards her, arms open, backpack discarded at the gate.

"Easy, Henry," Emma called, knowing how much physical pain his other mother was still hiding, but Regina simply dropped to her knees in front of their child and let him practically topple her over. All barriers destroyed, tears washed the faces of both mother and child as Emma and Archie watched from a short distance, smiling through their own damp cascades of joy, relief, and an understanding that something long overdue was happening.

Call it forgiveness, from son to mother. Regina's self-forgiveness was another story, but that was placed aside for now.

Call it redemption. Never again would Henry consider the woman that had been willing to die for him and Emma the "Evil Queen," and never again could anyone who knew what happened in that warehouse doubt Regina's intentions and how deeply she'd changed.

Call it family. As Emma hovered in the background, Regina knew she'd never felt this sense of completion, which she'd dreamed of creating with Daniel. _Then love again_ indeed.

Call it happiness. Archie, with Henry's back to him, had never seen such pure joy on Regina's face, or on Emma's, for that matter, as she looked on. His own heart soared at the sight.

Call it love. The words slipped out of Henry's lips before Regina, ever dignified, had the composure to utter them, and she wondered why she had ever considered anything in the world important next to this kind of affection. And there was no seed of doubt in her mind: Henry had happily accepted her and Emma's relationship before she'd gone to sacrifice herself, so there was no false motivation there. Not that she could ever suspect that of her beloved child anyway.

He wholly loved her, and she let it wash over her: her eyes burned with overwhelmed tears as she felt his little hands clutching at her back. He was clinging to her, she realized, and she cooed comfort softly in his ear. "Your mother loves you, Henry," she whispered, as she had countless times since he was an infant. "I love you greater than all the stars in the sky, sweetheart, and I'll always be here with you."

He sniffled loudly in her ear and pulled back from her, distressed. "But what if you're not? What if someone hurts you too much and you die?"

Without missing a beat, the miller's granddaughter smiled softly at him and said in her most honeyed and comforting-Henry-voice, "Then I'll always be right here;" she touched his forehead softly, "and here;" she placed her open palm onto his heart, "and everywhere;" she let her hand flutter in the air between and beyond them, "and no one can ever take that nor my love away from you."

She touched his chin tenderly with one hand and wiped his tears with another. He sniffled again and nodded at her, seeming unable to get enough of seeing her face in front of his. Which was fortunate, because she couldn't get enough of his, either. She smiled more broadly.

"Now come, honey. We can and certainly will talk - and, I'm sure, cry - more soon, but I know you're hungry. And there's no need to fret right now: both your mothers are here." She extended a hand backwards to Emma, who took it immediately, not having wanted to intrude, but loving beyond belief the extension of welcome.

* * *

They got through dinner by exchanging stories about the Enchanted Forest, the three adults with many (somewhat watered down) adventures to share with Henry, who was eagerly interrogating each of them. What does it feel like to be a cricket and be able to fly? Do other crickets talk? What was your castle like? Did you ever meet a unicorn? Tell me the story about meeting Anton again. Was his castle really that big?

Regina had almost cried once or twice - she'd navigated smoothly around the unicorn question by telling Henry's eager eyes how beautiful they are, and offered Archie a grateful, thin-lipped smile when he swept in with his own unicorn story - and Ruby couldn't hold back her smirks when she watched from a distance the way Emma took the olives out of Regina's salad and placed a few fries (that Regina swore she didn't want) onto Regina's plate until they disappeared into the brunette's mouth.

When Henry's straw was making an empty sucking sound in his milkshake, the adults exchanged a determined glance: now the questions were going to begin. Indeed, he looked up at Regina gravely and asked, "So Mom, um..." He glanced at Archie, who nodded at him in encouragement. Keeping in mind what they'd discussed, Henry continued. "If you don't want to talk about it, I understand, but um... what happened today? Are you okay?"

Emma's hand found Regina's under the table and the Queen squeezed her gratitude. "I'm fine now, Henry, and you've nothing to worry about. But... you know that Greg and Tamara were in Storybrooke without the best of intentions, yes?" she began. Their son nodded and she swallowed, unsure for the moment how to press on. She caught Archie's eye and started again.

"Well, I had... I had hurt Greg in his past and he... he wanted revenge. And Tamara... I'm not sure what happened to her, Henry, but I imagine that magic has hurt her terribly. Not my magic, but someone's. They both wanted to destroy all the magic in Storybrooke. Does this make sense so far?"

Henry nodded again, chewing his straw nervously.

"Well, I realized last night what they were planning to do: there's a fail-safe device, a trigger built into the Curse, that would have erased the Curse and destroyed Storybrooke and everyone in it. I needed to destroy it before they could set it off, but I -"

At this her voice faltered, and Emma stepped in smoothly.

"Your mom was scared that if I went with her to get the trigger before they did, I'd get hurt, and she didn't want that, kid, so she went to get it herself. Kinda like you went into the mine by yourself: not the best decision, but very, very brave." She smiled, closed-lipped, at Regina as Archie nodded his approval of their explanation. "But they caught her, Henry, and like your mom said, Greg wanted revenge, so they weren't very nice to her..."

Regina's hand flinched in Emma's, and Archie picked up the story. "Henry, you know... you know what torture is, don't you?" Henry's face a perfect picture of concern and festering dread, he nodded. Regina took his hand into hers across the table, but silently let Archie continue, overwhelmingly grateful for this thing that felt like friendship and support.

"Well, Greg... Greg had been hurt very badly, so he thought it was alright - and of course it wasn't - to hurt your mother, over and over again. He used a machine to..." He glanced at Regina, who knew Henry would hear the rumors anyway. She cut in for him, wanting Henry to hear it from her lips.

"Do you know what it means to be electrocuted, Henry?" Her voice was soft and gentle.

He nodded and whispered very quietly, "Like lightening."

Regina grimaced a smile. "That's right, honey. Greg used a machine to put electricity into my body. I was... it was very dangerous, and even though I'm alright now, I was hurt very badly when Emma found me and rescued me."

Emma, her voice desperately trying to hide her tears, also reached for Henry's hand and picked up the story. "The rescue didn't go perfectly, and Snow got hurt. Your mom saved her, and then she saved Storybrooke: she destroyed the fail-safe."

"With Emma's help," Regina inserted, her eyes misted with something Henry registered as calmed fear, suppressed pain, and a desperate wish that he be okay.

"And that's the story, really, kid." Henry stared down into his empty milkshake sadly.

"What happened to Greg and Tamara?" he asked softly.

"Their memories are going to be erased so they don't remember magic, and Neal is going to take them away from Storybrooke. Your mom and I are gonna put up a spell around the town so no one like that can get in here again."

Henry nodded, accepting Emma's explanation gratefully, with his head down. "I'm sorry you got hurt, Mom," he murmured, unable to meet her eyes. "Can I help make it better?"

"Oh, Henry," Regina breathed, slipping out of her seat and into the booth next to Henry, coddling him into her chest, "you always do."

Lost in staring at her new family, Emma jumped when she felt an apologetic touch on her shoulder. She looked up into Ruby's face as the waitress summoned her aside. Emma rose reluctantly.

"Sorry, Ems, but your mom wanted you to know: Greg's on the mend, and I got Blue to agree to make the memory potions for both of them. And it took a little yelling, but I got Neal to take them out of Storybrooke and act like they were just on a road trip together and nothing significant happened. Blue's taking away Greg's gun shot scars, too, so he won't know anything's wrong. Thought you'd wanna know."

"Thanks, Ruby," Emma told her distractedly, watching tears slip out of mother and son's eyes as Henry clung to Regina.

"Oh," Ruby called to her as she went to sit back down, "and your mom wants to know when the wedding is."

Emma snorted, bemused, and squatted down beside her son and her lover, one hand on Henry's arm and one on Regina's waist, staring up at the woman and wondering whether she'd ever want to marry again after that Leopold disaster, and knowing that no matter what they did, something fantastic - and truly fairy tale-like - had begun.

* * *

"Absolutely _not_! I am _not _going to... to _endorse_ this... this..." Snow was spluttering in her kitchen, and Regina's eyebrow cocked dangerously. It was a couple of weeks later, and Henry had moved with Emma back into 108 Mifflin Street. Tonight, though, Regina was feeling more than ready to make love with Emma again, her body being healed and her emotions being somewhat more stable, and - knowing it would be their first time in weeks - they had, perhaps too eagerly, asked Snow and Charming to take Henry for the evening.

"What is it, dear? You don't want to endorse your daughter engaging in an adult and loving relationship with someone who would die for her?" A smirk was playing on Regina's lips, and Emma and Charming glanced at each other in nervous anticipation, Emma bouncing back and forth on the balls of her feet and digging her hands, like Charming was, deep into her pockets.

Snow spluttered. "I - what - no, of course I do, Regina, I just don't feel the need to take Henry for the night so that you two can... can..."

Regina merely raised her eyebrows as Snow bounced the soft thumb-side of her fists off of each other in exasperated illustration. Charming snorted his laughter, but was silenced by a sideways glance from his wife.

"Inarticulate and unimaginative in your gesturing as you are, dear, I'm nonetheless able to interpret your meaning. And I ask you, would you rather the two of us engage in the behaviors of pubescent adolescents and get walked in on by our child, as, I've heard, you two have done?" She innocently gestured to Snow and Charming's very exposed bed with one hand on her hip.

"Alright, Regina, we get it," Charming finally cut in, his face unspeakably crimson. "And we'd love to have Henry, of course, but couldn't you just... put a silencing spell on the room or something, so that when Snow and I take him, we don't feel like we're... you know... playing a role in our daughter's sex life?"

Regina smiled widely at him, and it was Emma and Snow's turn to exchange amusedly nervous glances. "I'm surprised that of the two of you, it was you who got those words out, Charming dear. But to answer your question, I could indeed put up just such a silencing spell around Emma and my bedroom." She let the last word hang in the air between them, savoring the taste of Emma's parents' discomfort.

Snow fanned open her fingers, which had gone to cover her face at Regina's last word. She looked at Regina with semi-obstructed vision and her palms hiding the upward twitching around the corners of her mouth. "But you won't, will you, Regina? Because that would make things too easy for us."

Regina smiled fully this time, sliding her arm around Emma's waist, who was giving her a sideways stare of immense amusement and admiring exasperation. "And now you're finally catching on to how things are going to work. Lovely. We'll drop Henry off at seven." She turned on her heel, swinging Emma's body around with her.

"Come along, Emma." But her radiantly joyful smile gave her away: fun though it was to have a laugh at Snow and Charming's expense, Regina was simply ecstatic to feel her hand around Emma's waist and Emma leaning close into her, hers forever.

Emma mock glared at Regina for the last comment before glancing back at her parents, Charming doubled over the kitchen counter, face mostly covered in his hands, giggling silently. Snow stood with her mouth wide open, watching Emma's arm slip over Regina's shoulders as she winked at her mother over her shoulder and strode away with her lover.

Before the door had even closed, Snow was dialing Ruby's number.

"Yeee-llo?"

"Alright, Red, out with it. You knew about this long before I did. It's been a hectic couple of weeks, but Regina seems better now, so you're not off the hook anymore: what do you know? Spill it."

She heard Ruby's giggle and the sound of pans clattering in the background. "Well, I guess you weren't there the day of Henry got trapped in the mines... Too busy seducing David into cheating on Kathryn..."

Snow held up a hand and Charming's eyebrows shot up, bemusedly watching his wife.

"Ah, we were cursed! On with it, Red."

Another chuckle from Ruby's end. "There was this moment when they were just staring each other down, having eye sex like they always do, but they totally got all up in each other's personal space and Emma was all, 'oh, Regina, I'm going to stare into your eyes and at your lips now,' and Regina was all, 'yes, Emma, save my son and then do me,' and since then, well... They were totally banging."

The pure redness of Snow White's face put her name to shame as she hung up on her best friend, thinking she should have known better than to ask.

* * *

Downstairs, Regina pulled Emma into her arms, exhilarated by the blonde's giggles and suddenly not caring who saw them together: she had been willing to lay it all down for this woman, and damned if everyone didn't know it by now anyway. She kissed her soundly on the mouth and blissfully ignored the sound of Grumpy's jaw hitting the floor. When she registered Henry's giggle, she paused in kissing Emma and, keeping the happily dazed younger woman in her arms, looked down at their son, who grinned broadly.

"My family's the best," he proclaimed, his arms flailing out in emphasis as both women embraced him happily.

* * *

And when they made love that night, they stayed in each other's arms through the morning, and awoke for the first time, naked and together, neither one the least bit concerned about going anywhere.


End file.
